museum description card.
Spacelander
designed 1946, manufactured
Bomard Industries (American), manufacturer
fiberglass frame with leather saddle
Designed in 1946 as the Classic, the curved lines and amoeba-like voids of Benjamin Bowden's bike frame combine pre-war streamlined style with the post-war era's penchant for organic forms. British bicycle makers found the Classic too costly to produce, thus it was not manufactured in number until 1960. Bowden, also an automobile designer, emigrated to the United States and worked with Bomard Industries in Michigan to convert the frame's design from aluminum to fiberglass, a new manufacturing material. The updated, limited-edition design was renamed the Spacelander—a reference to the space-race frenzy of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Only 522 were made.