An article by Tony Hadland from The Moultoneer, September/October 1992

The number of miles travelled by bicycle in the UK declined very steeply and consistently from at least 1954.  It did not level out until the mid 1970s.  There was a parallel decline in bicycle sales.

In the early 1960s this decline was so steep that, had it continued at the same rate, cycle sales would have ceased altogether by 1967. By the time the Moulton was launched annual sales had dropped by a third in just three years, from about 0.9m to less than 0.6m.

Bicycle sales rose through the late 60s, 70s and early 80s, hitting about 2.2m in 1983.  Sales then fell steeply until 1986 (1.5m) rising again to about 2.6m in 1990, since when they have fallen again.

It seems clear then that the Moulton arrested an almost terminal decline in interest in bicycling (apart from among the then very small hard core of CTC and racing club members).  That decline can be attributed largely to cycling's "cloth cap" image in the 1950s.  As, during Macmillan's "never had it so good" era, more and more people could afford cars, cycling had become increasingly "infra dig".  In the early 1950s it had been normal for even so-called "professional" people to cycle to work (and cycle back for lunch!) but that had changed rapidly.

Also, in the UK, there was very little public interest in cycle sport to help sustain cycling's image.  To most people it was merely the poor man's transport, a sign of someone who could not yet afford a car.

It must be remembered that the Moulton bicycle was not a market-pull product; rather it was technology-push.  Alex Moulton did not set out to make his living by designing or selling bikes.  He did not need to, which was his good fortune and ours.  Instead his interest in cycling led him to try to develop a better bicycle.  His machine was spurned by the marketing experts at Raleigh, despite the fact that the company had assisted in its development and had displayed the prototype Moulton.

Nonetheless Moulton's product caught the public imagination.  A phrase I used in "The Moulton Bicycle" book has been quoted by other authors: "a mini-bike to go with mini-skirts and mini-cars; all part of the swinging sixties".  People in general were at the time very open and receptive to technological change and innovation supersonic flight, nuclear power, hovercraft, satellites, hydrolastic suspension, front-wheel drive, solid state electronics... Major change was all around and there was a subliminal belief in automatic and continual progress.  Change affected all aspects of life, be it politics, medicine, religion or the media - JFK, the pill, the Second Vatican council, Radio Caroline - nothing was sacrosanct, so why should bikes be?

The Moulton appealed to the fashion conscious because it was not "cloth cap" and related at a simplistic (and possibly subliminal) level to developments in other areas of transport.  Motor scooters, mini-cars, diesel trains - all had small wheels compared to their predecessors.  The Moulton appealed to the technically aware because of its suspension and cantilevered frame.  It appealed to a changing society because it had a unisex frame, adjustable for most members of the family.  And its speed successes tended to confirm to doubters that the machine was efficient.

The Moulton, although conceived as a multi-role machine with racing, touring, car-boot and utility versions, came across as a fun machine.  This was something relatively new.  Before that, bikes were either an out-of-fashion utilitarian means of transport or, for a small minority, a piece of sporting equipment.  In fact, four trends can be seen to emerge from the Moulton:

• the small-wheeled unisex shopper, which maintained a very large share of the cycle market well into the 1970s (the Raleigh 20 series, for example, was the Nottingham company's biggest seller some ten years after the advent of the Moulton)
• relatively expensive 'concept' bikes for children the classic being the Raleigh Chopper, based on an RSW frame (itself a response to the Moulton) and sold to parents for up to £125 at mid 70s prices! (This also paved the way in the UK for BMX.)
• enhanced interest in portable/folding bicycles Bickerton, Micro, Brompton, Airframe, Dahon and nastier beasts.
• the high-tech, genuine high performance small wheeler, epitomised by the Alex Moulton AM series.

There was also some stimulus to other divergent designs, such as recumbents and HPVs in general, not a few of which use Alex Moulton's 17" tyres and rims.

The rise in non-club leisure cycling in the UK, which since the mid 1960s has accounted for the vast majority of cycle sales, can be traced pretty solidly back to the Moulton.  People who bought Moultons, or more likely one of the non-Moulton small-wheelers that undercut the original, often moved on to 'ten-speed racers' in the early 70s and to ATBs in the 80s.  The average mileage covered was (and remains) exceedingly low... but that is another matter!