One of Lord Julian's top engineers, however, was a Jewish refugee from Germany. Chiam Pishtah, while a brilliant designer in his own right, was really too much of a prima-donna to work on an international design team and insisted, for religious reasons, on using cubits per moon. The chronometer he fabricated for the Werewolf, while a marvel of engineering at the time (it had, among other innovations, an unlimited-slip, bevel-gear differential linkage), was an offense to British sensibilities and was also virtually impossible to calibrate against existing speed records.

Pishtah was also the inventor of the patented "Constant Torque Fastener," described as follows in the Spagthorpe.txt archives:

[It] consisted of a bolt with a hole drilled through it. The outer threads were left hand thread while the hole was threaded right hand. The mating nut and the bolt would be both loosened and tightened with a turn of either in any direction maintaining a constant preload. This system was intended for use on axles and other bearings eliminating the need for cotter pins and the like. Both ideas were scrapped when it was realized that the oxy/acetylene "spanner" used to remove these bolts would not fit in the tool bag.

There are a lot of people out there who swear that the only true Spagthorpes are those made after Pishtah's untimely death in the mid '70s in a freak chain lubing incident. What about the '72 Electric Blue Spag? Pish was involved in that one, and it was the only bike of its kind, barring cheap American imitations. You have to admit that 105hp at the wheel is a hell of an accomplishment in a 300 lb production bike, even if it did require flourine cooling and handled like the lamentable limited Skye Terrier line of the late '60s (which of course most of the fork and suspension technology came from). Too bad most of these are wrapped around fire hydrants nowadays.