When humanity developed the motorcycle — its greatest achievement to date — it did so on the back of innovation that came before. The first motorcycle incorporated what we’d already learned from bicycles, which meant we never had the opportunity to make the same design mistakes as other two-wheelers. We never got a penny farthing motorcycle, and that’s a tragedy that YouTube engineer Gregulations set out to remedy.
Greg had a dream that he built the world’s fastest penny farthing out of a superbike, and decided to make that dream a reality through careful engineering, less-careful error correcting based on mistakes in that initial engineering, and throwing a whole lot of money at a machine shop to build parts that no one else would ever conceive of. The result? A jacked-up R6 on a massive steel wheel and nearly-as-massive steel swing arm setup, that is absolute garbage to ride.
The resulting SuperFarthing is the product of plenty of engineering hackery thanks to problems that showed up after the initial run of parts was already machined. Pieces had to be redesigned or cut away to fit accessories not included in the original model, little luxuries like “brake calipers,” and the entire rear suspension ended up being scrapped after Greg realized that the rear wheel had enough leverage from its newly-heightened swingarm to compress the shock with mere acceleration. It’s rare to find a bike with too much anti-squat, but here’s a perfect example.
Greg also learned that a 65-inch steel front wheel is all but impossible to turn, leading him to equip the SuperFarthing with what may well be the first-ever hydraulic power steering on a motorcycle. The hydraulics were already there to lift the training wheels once the rider got going — an idea that immediately proved ill-advised, leaving the pump open to be repurposed.
The SuperFarthing may not really be a penny farthing by any definition of the word — it has four wheels and isn’t pedal-powered — but it’s no less impressive a feat of engineering. I may value my mortal coil a bit too much to ever want to ride it, but I’m so glad it exists.