Cycle aid

quick glance at the Cykelaid gives the impression that it was some sort of antecedent to the ubiquitous post-Second World War VeloSolex. Well it is, and it isn’t. The idea of hanging the engine on the front wheel where it doesn’t interfere with the pedalling function of what is essentially a beefed-up pedal cycle is the same, and the performance is similar, but there are significant mechanical differences between the two. Firstly there’s the apparently mundane matter of the tyres available when these machines were introduced. Like most post-Second World War cyclemotors, the VeloSolex relied on a friction drive bearing heavily onto the front tyre. But the Cykelaid was introduced three decades earlier when weakly reinforced beaded edge tyres were the norm, and I doubt if they’d have taken kindly