The penny-farthing apparently wasn’t precarious enough. Sérgio Batista has taken the Victorian bicycle concept, pointed it skyward, and given it a cyberpunk identity crisis. Meet 5KYW33L: part antique transport, part flying machine, and absolutely not something I’d trust myself to parallel park.
Built for the LSB Spindlejack Challenge, this LEGO hoverbike mixes old-world engineering with exposed machinery, hydraulic pipes, and futuristic propulsion. That’s a lovely collision of design languages. A penny-farthing already has an eccentric premise; turning it into airborne sci-fi transport pushes the idea somewhere stranger than simply adding rockets to a bicycle.
For me, the hook is that tension between elegance and mechanical complication. The Victorian inspiration brings the gentlemanly Sunday outing; the cyberpunk machinery suggests that outing might involve dodging traffic several storeys above street level. It’s the sort of mashup that makes me want to follow the plumbing and figure out what does what. Top hat optional. Helmet very much encouraged.
Build by SergioBatista on Flickr.
