The First Cyclist To Reach 127 MPH Did It Behind A Gull-Wing Benz On A Crazy-Looking Bike

Sometimes, you see an image and that image is all you need to become fascinated. I know we say not to judge books by their covers, but damn, a good cover can do wonders. Don’t underestimate the power of images! In this particular case, it’s really two images: one of a bicycle with a cartoonishly-huge 130-tooth sprocket, and another of that same bicycle being ridden behind, of all cars, a gull-wing Mercedes-Benz 300SL. I had to know just what the hell this was all about.

This pair of striking images were and are all about one man, José Meiffret, and his dream to pedal a bicycle really, really fast. I’m happy to say Meiffret realized that dream in 1962 on a stretch of autobahn, drafting behind that gull-wing Benz with a tent attached to its rear, where he managed to set a bicycle speed world record of a staggering 127 mph.

Holy crap, right? That is astounding. And, as you can imagine, wildly, dizzyingly dangerous. The method used here, called motor-pacing, where a cyclist uses a motor vehicle in front to break through the wind and set the pace, is absolutely jam-packed with dangers. Get too close, contact any part of that car in front of you, and you’re likely to get knocked off balance and crash, painfully and very likely, lethally. Fall too far behind and the air turbulence will fling you around like a ragdoll until you crash, with the same combination of pain and likely lethality. This is all no joke.

But let’s look into this all a bit more, especially the pictures that caught my attention! Like the astounding bicycle used:

It looks like a joke, some kind of physics cartoon you’d see in a textbook where you’re first learning about gear ratios. But it’s no joke, it’s 130 teeth chained to a 15 tooth rear sprocket, giving a gear ratio of 0.115385:1. So that means, what, for every revolution of that huge pedal sprocket, the rear wheel is spinning 8.67 times.

I also like how the sprocket has “MEIFFRET” machined into it, just in case you thought maybe this was some sort of off-the-shelf accessory you could add to your personal bike.

That bike also has some other interesting alterations to meet the demands of such high speeds: the front fork is reversed, for reasons related to how caster wheels work, which I just recently learned about while writing about monowheel trailers. I believe the reversal was done to reduce the amount of “swivel lead” which can lead to “caster flutter” – the phenomenon you may have encountered with wobbly shopping cart wheels, a situation which could be deadly at high speeds on a bike.

The wheel’s rims were made of, surprisingly, wood, which helped prevent overheating. [Ed note: If you’re thinking, “But aluminum rims would dissipate heat better than wood,” you are correct. I suspect the overheating in question refers to the glue that holds the tires onto the rims. Where an aluminum rim would transfer braking heat to the glue and soften it, possibly resulting in a tire coming off, the wooden rims insulated the glue from braking heat. – Pete] The frame was reinforced at crucial points, and the entire bicycle weighed 45 pounds. But that’s only half the story here; the other remarkable part was the car chosen for him to ride behind, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL:

I’m used to seeing these gullwings almost exclusively as reverential objects of beauty at car shows or sometimes being carefully paraded around a track; the idea of strapping some tent-like contraption to the back of a gullwing feels deliciously subversive. I love it.

I’m not entirely clear exactly what is going on in the back of that thing, either: it sort of looks like a fridge, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s in there. There is a roller at the base, I believe to prevent the wheel from stopping should contact be made, but after a point, it’s still dangerous to make any kind of contact.

As Clifford Graves wrote in his 1965 article for American Bicycling magazine, describing Meiffret’s run after a motorcycle was used to help him get the impossibly-geared bicycle going (!), the many, many dangers of such an undertaking are made clear:

Swiftly, the bizarre combination of man and machine gathered speed. Meiffret’s job on penalty of death was to stay glued to his windscreen. The screen had a roller, but if he should touch it at 100 miles an hour, he would be clipped. On the other hand, if he should fall behind as little as 18 inches, the turbulence would make mincemeat of him. If the car should jerk or lurch or hit a bump, he would be in immediate mortal danger. An engineer had warned him that at these speeds, the centrifugal force might cause his flimsy wheels to collapse. Undismayed by the prospect, Meiffret bent down to his task.

Holy crap. There’s videos of the record run, but before we look at that, it’s maybe worth looking at an earlier attempt from 1952 with an open-wheel race car setting the pace that ended in near-disaster:

Ouch. Incredibly, Meiffret was undaunted, and kept at it, culminating in his record run:

There must have been mountings for cameras on that rig to get the footage seen there; also, was this some sort of speaking tube?

I haven’t seen an explanation for that, so I’m just going to believe that was how they communicated with José back there, pedaling like a madman.

When it came to accepting the danger, Meiffret seemed to accept the risks with a calm resignation. He carried a note with him as he rode, which read

“In case of fatal accident, I beg of the spectators not to feel sorry for me. I am a poor man, an orphan since the age of eleven, and I have suffered much. Death holds no terror for me. This record attempt is my way of expressing myself. If the doctors can do no more for me, please bury me by the side of the road where I have fallen.”

Wow. I kind of want to give this fella a hug now.

But, it’s worth noting, José isn’t buried on the side of the autobahn, because he pulled off his record attempt, reaching a shocking speed of 127.342 mph. The record has since been broken, with the latest motor-paced record set in 2019 at a shocking speed of 174.34 mph.

But if we look at that run, with its specialized bike and a Porsche Cayanne pace car:

… it just doesn’t even look a tenth as cool as Meiffret setup, even if it is faster. In this case, I’m going for style over speed.

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