The Australian automotive industry is on its knees... but it's not all bad, in fact it's pretty awesome for cycling as many highly trained and experienced engineers are jumping into designing and manufacturing cool new cycling bits.

MIKE BOUDRIE

Sean Stoney and Stefan Wrobel have teamed up to reinvent the way we carry our bikes on our cars. You might ask what's wrong with the current way, but as with many things, until someone comes along with a new idea you'll likely not see that there was a problem in the first place. The guys are both riders and having met them a few times now and chatted about where Upside is at, I personally want them to go really well, they are out there risking a lot so we can have cool new stuff.

Sean is a business guy, he's got the plan all worked out, and Stefan is the engineer that has created something that's really quite different. From the second I saw it I wanted to have it on La Velocita. So in the interests of full disclosure, I'll let you know that Upside are one of La Velocita's supporters. We've helped the guys raise awareness for their bike rack and they have helped us out with some money to help grow La Velocita,

So what is the Upside Rack? It's a compact bike rack that mounts to your bars and saddle in a few seconds, then you flip your bike upside down and lock it onto roof bars on your car. Easy. Check out the video below.

The thing I that I like most about the Upside Rack is that you can mount your bike onto car cross bar racks easily... and don't need specialist bike racks permanently sitting on every car, including your friend's cars. There's no need to buy multiple large and heavy racks. Don't get me wrong, I love the Thule racks I've been using for years, but, and it's a big but, you pretty much need a couple on your own car, then also on your mates' cars. It gets very expensive, very quickly for everyone. The Upside skips this issue... want to take you bike on a friend's car and they only have one bike rack.. it's easy with the Upside Rack.

The guys are now very close to production, I've had a play with their prototype and it looks great. It's small, lightweight and really nicely put together. They have passed their funding target and have interest for the Upside globally. It's just awesome to see two Melbourne guys getting it done.