As a general rule, one of the best ways to proceed in life is by not yucking someone else’s yum. You can apply that in whatever way you like – fashion, music, sexuality – but you can also apply it to bikes. The best bike is the one that you’re riding, I once wrote.
I still believe that. Mostly.
About a year ago, I found a little blue folding bike on the side of the road. It had 16” wheels, rear suspension, Jaguar branding – it looked, at a glance, like one of those soulless automotive industry collaborations that occasionally produce a good bike but mostly produce average bikes at an insane mark-up. With the vague promise of #content and a general willingness to pick up hard rubbish, I walked it home to see what we were dealing with.
The initial assessment was … not positive. The brakes didn’t work. I didn’t even know what one of the types of brakes was (or the valves, for that matter). There were typos in the model name (Kingdam Z!) and stickers in Japanese. There was a URL on the chain/seatstay, with a http:// at the start (better safe than sorry!). And, for something that was so small that I have no chance of riding it comfortably, it seemed to be built out of cast iron: a back-straining 16 kg (35.3 pounds).
There were, you will understand, questions that needed answering: why does this bike exist? Who made it? And, even though Jaguar’s brand allure has dimmed of late, why was the automotive brand putting its name on this thing? Why risk giving a tiny Jaguar driver a hernia lifting this into the boot of their Tata Motors-made, faux British-heritage-mobile?
The answer, I learned, was that they hadn’t. “We have heard back from the Brand Protection department and they have confirmed that this is definitely counterfeit, therefore we are unable to answer the Qs relating to the product I'm afraid,” came a response from Jaguar’s corporate affairs department. “So sorry that we haven't been able to support you with your query this time.” Not as sorry as I am.
So who did make this? The URL printed on the frame wasn’t much help – it pointed to a custom clothing company in Pakistan, with no apparent affiliation with Jaguar vehicles other than having the same name.
Nonetheless, I sent over some pictures of the bike and asked some hard questions. Questions like: “Is this an official collaboration with Jaguar the car company?", "How did this product come about?" and "Do you still make bikes?”
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