
Photo: Greg Mitchell

Photo: Greg Mitchell
Just to keep the SuperFarthing upright at all times, Mitchell had to install a pair of lateral stabilizer wheels, which he originally conceived as hydraulically retractable. However, he soon realized that attempting to maneuver his creation without them was “suicide with extra steps” so he removed the option to lift the stabilizers altogether. But that was only one of many problems he would have to solve. Even at full steering lock, the bike would only go straight due to huge fork flex, and despite all the rider’s efforts, the bike followed even the slightest road camber. Mitchell knew he had to go back to the drawing board to make the SuperFarthing rideable, and he did just that. He installed a rigid fork assembly, fortified the frame of his unique bike, and to make it even slightly controllable, he implemented a hydraulic power steering system, using handlebar-mounted buttons to keep the penny-farthing from succumbing to road cambers. “I was originally thinking I would ride it once and then never again, but it’s actually nowhere near as bad as you would think. With the stabilizers down, it’s just like riding a really tall quadbike,” Greg said. “So far, I’ve only managed to get about 50mph out of it, but that was on a short stretch of road. It’ll definitely do more though. I’ll need to find somewhere bigger to get some more practice in because it’s so different to riding anything else.”The world’s faster penny-farthing isn’t road-legal in England because of its non-pneumatic front wheel, so testing it out on the open road isn’t an option, but Mitchell would really like to ride it on a perfectly flat track to bypass the hydraulic power steering, as “trying to steer it with buttons is not the best, as you can imagine, especially at speed”. Although still far from being the world’s safest or most comfortable motorcycle, the SuperFarthing is still both visually and technically impressive. And Greg Mitchell honestly believes that under the right conditions, it can reach speeds of around 140mph.