Bicycle Quarterly is a journal that examines the history, design, and development of bicycles with a focus on randonneuring — the practice of long-distance, self-supported cycling that has its deepest roots in France and its most devoted practitioners everywhere else. The magazine was formerly known as Vintage Bicycle Quarterly, and the name change tells you something about its evolution: it started as a publication for collectors of classic lightweight bicycles, particularly French machines by builders like Alex Singer and René Herse, and gradually expanded into a broader inquiry into what makes a bicycle work well.
Bicycle Times once described it as part anthropology journal, part engineering text, and the label fits. The magazine publishes articles that evaluate equipment and bicycles for performance and function, complete with footnotes — a rarity in cycling media, where most reviews amount to enthusiastic adjectives attached to manufacturer specifications. Bicycle Quarterly takes the opposite approach: it measures, tests, compares, and argues, treating the bicycle as a designed object worthy of the same analytical rigour that architecture or industrial design receives.
For its devoted readership — and it is the kind of publication that inspires devotion rather than casual browsing — Bicycle Quarterly is not just a magazine but a reference library, a community, and an ongoing argument about what a bicycle should be. That argument has been running for years, and it shows no sign of reaching a conclusion. Which is, of course, the point.