The Pedersen has attracted riders over the entire century and a quarter it has been extant, almost as long as the safety bicycle itself. Even in periods when there was no manufacturer interested in it, there have always been cycling folk making one or two or three, with some interesting variations. The major torch-bearers were in a hippie commune in the Christiania area of Copenhagen for several decades back until the German enthusiast and businessman Kalle Kalkhoff put the operation on a sound footing as a German concern with Czech suppliers. As you can imagine, it wasn't long before he fell out with the hippies. His bikes presented such punctilio that even I, an artist very sensitive to the cruder forms of welding, was attracted. Herr Kalkhoff died and another Baukast, Utopia-Velo, took over the designs and supply channels of what was already a thoroughly modernized bike, in the same way my Utopia Kranich is a thoroughly modernized Locomotief Crossframe Deluxe; it's a niche and price class Utopia understands thoroughly, in the same way that Thorn understands high-value but also highly reliable touring and utility bikes. But the fact that Utopia isn't a mass-marketer already tells you you'll never see more than a few Pedersens even in Germany, which is a shame as it is a perfectly rational design -- until you try to get it made in Taiwan, when they'll laugh you off the island!
The only reason I didn't buy a Kalkhoff Pedersen, back when I was buying a new bike every couple of years, was the consideration, about the time Herr Kalkhoff made the hippie product suitable for my use, that sometime after I turned 60 I would require a low stepover bike. I don't think there's a higher stepover than a Pedersen, except the parade bikes-on-stilts built in Austin, Texas, by Chalo Colina.
