BSO- bicycle shaped object

Asda style bike assembly, originally uploaded by mike1727.

BBC TV consumer rights programme Watchdog has just run an article on assembling flatpack bikes bought from supermarkets for under £100. The article is fairly good, since the bikes are put together by normal, unbikeskilled people, just the sort of people who would mistakenly buy a cheap and nasty bike.

"All of our volunteers struggled with their instructions and the tools often seemed inadequate for the job. All five made crucial mistakes that left their bikes unsafe to ride..."Whether it was down to our cyclists and their assembly, or problems with the individual bikes we happened to buy, they all ended up with faults that only someone in the know would be able to put right."

There's a blog about BSOs here, here's a good article on the program in Bikeradar .

And here's the evidence in the wild- outside the Quadrant shops in Marshalswick.