Donhou Top 10 // No.9 - Utility prototype (2015)

Donhou Rapha Utility bike

This was a prototype we made for a Utility project and there’s actually two bikes, a “his” and a “hers” version, I just never took a decent set of photos of the his version. The men’s is still the bike I ride the most to this day, its seen mudguarded commuting duties, nursery runs and even some single speed CX racing. The women’s was gifted to my partner and won Best Utility at Bespoked in 2014, although it nearly didn’t make it to the show at all (thats a whole other story!). After that it got resprayed as I was asked to be involved with the Rapha + Liberty project (first pic) and the bike was a perfect fit.

The main set of pics show the original bike. The idea was to develop a bike we could produce in higher volumes and for it to be much more accessible in terms of price, as well as being at a price you can justify leaving it locked up somewhere. I wanted to distill what we were doing with the custom Utility style bikes we were making. Produce a bike which has all the design values of a Donhou and all the features we’d developed on our custom town bikes. The project got pushed to the side with the demand for custom stuff. But its something that has always been there in the back of my mind. With more people needing bikes now in these strange times we are in, it feels like perhaps it should be revisited.

Donhou Rapha utility bike handlebar

Donhou Rapha Utility paintDonhou Rapha utility bike bridgeDonhou Rapha utility bike forkDonhou Rapha utility bike dropout