The Ostoure, a muscle bike that only existed on screen

What it was

Ostoure means legend in Persian. Mohammad Reza Shojaie, an Iranian designer, said the stone carvings of ancient Persepolis inspired its shape. New Atlas, then still called Gizmag, described it in August 2010 as his idea of a future street muscle bike. The renderings show black, faceted bodywork and a single round headlight. The coverage we found names no engine and no power figure.

The engineering was ambitious. Both wheels were driven, apparently by shafts. The front wheel hung on a linkage instead of a fork, which implied hub steering, and the rider held two grips on either side of the fairing, a layout Shojaie compared to piloting an aircraft. Each end had a single shock, and extra radiators sat on both sides. A matching helmet carried a heads-up display, speakers, Bluetooth and even air-conditioning. New Atlas added that the work had earned Shojaie a scholarship to the Istituto Europeo di Design in Italy.

The legend stayed on the screen, and its designer went and built something people could ride.

Where the idea went

No prototype followed. When New Atlas returned to Shojaie in February 2018, it wrote that the Ostoure had never made it past the CAD render stage.

By then he had a different project. With two of his brothers and a partner, and now going by Max, he put a carbon-framed electric bicycle called Nireeka on Indiegogo. The frame weighed 1.5 kg and the whole bike less than 15.5 kg, and the campaign passed its $35,000 goal. Two years later Electrek reported that this first bike had raised $1.8 million from 4,500 backers and had been delivered to more than 50 countries.

More models followed. In November 2022 New Atlas covered the Revenant, a 1,000-watt full-suspension e-bike with optional front-wheel ABS. It was Nireeka’s fourth bike, after the Homie, the Prime and the Nyx, and the article named Max Shojaie as designer and CEO.

What it means now

Most items on the Ostoure’s parts list exist somewhere. Hub-center steering has been in production since Bimota’s Tesi 1/D of 1990, though rarely: 147 of that first model were built. Helmets with built-in speakers, a microphone and Bluetooth are now ordinary catalog items. We could not find a production motorcycle that combines these parts with two-wheel drive the way the renderings did.

The more useful lesson is in what Shojaie did next. A render costs little to make dramatic. A frame that has to be molded, shipped and supported in dozens of countries is harder, and that is the vehicle he delivered.