Travel Light

Many us think we have good ideas, but it’s the drive to act upon them that separates entrepreneurs from idle dreamers. The force that propelled Petre Craciun to invent the world’s lightest folding bike – named the Hummingbird, and weighing just 6.9kg – was simple: love. His girlfriend Ligia’s folding bike was too heavy to carry up the four flights of stairs to their at, so Craciun, 26, an engineer and bike tinkerer who has owned, taken apart and rebuilt close to 200 bicycles in his time, set about making her a lighter one.

His prototype, funded through Kickstarter, weighed considerably less than Ligia’s now-discarded old model. But it was when Ligia’s boss got wind of it, and took Craciun and the Hummingbird to David Richards, that things started to move at pace. Richards is the former chairman of Aston Martin and team principal of Benetton Formula 1 Racing, and now the chairman of Prodrive, a motorsport and engineering company that designs and constructs racing cars – so a man who’s not unfamiliar with sleek, efficient design. Richards rode the prototype around his kitchen (he has a big kitchen) and he offered on the spot to refine and manufacture the Hummingbird from Prodrive’s home in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

The finished bike’s clever design means that the back wheel and chain fold forward under the frame, so it collapses in just five seconds. That frame is constructed using slices of lightweight carbon fibre, fused together to form one piece – the same process employed by Prodrive’s racing cars. “Carbon fibre is an amazing material because it’s five times as strong and a third of the weight of steel,” says Craciun. “Most professional bikes are made from carbon fibre, but there were no carbon- fibre folding bikes out there.”

So now, thanks to Kickstarter, Prodrive, and a lot of inspiration and hard work from Craciun, Ligia has a bike that’s light enough to take anywhere. It’s a very modern love story... perfect for idle dreamers. 

The Hummingbird is available in four colours, starting from £3,395. hummingbirdbike.com 

This article is taken from the Goodwood magazine, Winter 2018 issue