Andre, I looked at the Utopia but their website is less user friendly being only in German. Their SilverMowe looks more traditional and appeals to me in a very good way but I am not sure how it compares to the Raven or Terra. The top tube looks very thin but they claim it is a "round the world" bike. I like having options and appreciate everyone's experience and advice.
As I said, Utopia is a special taste. The SilberMowe (Silver Gull) is a throwback to the '60s roadbike doubling as a touring bike. The apparently thin top tube is merely apparent: that bike is specified for 160kg load, has been tested for it (standard Utopia practice -- they test everything). and has circumnavigations to its credit to prove it; in general, you may take it that German businessmen do not lie, exaggerate or bluster like Americans, or supply crap and hope for the best; they'd go to jail for many standard American business practices. But the Silbermowe is a bit too commonplace for Utopia customers (believe it or not, the very odd Kranich priesterrijwiel -- priest's bicycle, from the time when priests wore divided skirted ankle-length coats -- is one of their bestsellers, the bike they're famous for), so at the end of 2015 the SilberMowe will be withdrawn. Meanwhile, if it is your sort of bike (and yes, it is pretty much an equivalent to a Thorn Raven or a Patria Terra), it is a luxuriously equipped Rohloff bike with a plutocratic name on it (easily removed if you want to be stealthy) for 2200 Euro while the last few sell out. See
http://www.utopia-velo.de/shop/sonderangebote/ They also have some Silbermowe frames but the sizes are limited and you have to pay the full price of nearly a thousand euro (menubar acrosss the top of their page>Shop> Ersatzteil>Rahmen>scroll down a fair way); the built bike with all that desirable trim is clearly the way to go.
I can understand why the SilberMowe doesn't sell. Your German burger of means and a certain age (too old to care what anyone else thinks) sees all these fabulously unique bikes with provenance going back decades and very desirable historical connections, and he doesn't even glance at the modest Silbermowe before he puts down his money. But, on the other hand, the SilberMowe has a reputation as a superior all-rounder in a style that doesn't attract attention, and with the attention, thieves. It seems likely to me that the efflorescence of the Utopia range is the worst enemy of the pristine, traditional, capable SilberMowe.
By way of illustration of how the rest of the Utopia range is the SilberMowe's worst enemy, rather than bikes from Patria or Thorn: All the same, regardless of the Silbermowe's exceptionally generous 160kg load rating, if I were buying a self-supported circumnavigation loaded tourer with side trips to the rougher parts of the world, I too might be tempted to bypass the perfectly suitable Silbermowe for the Kranich or the London, both even more capable, both equally or perhaps even better-proven, and therefore with a greater margin of safety.
The Thorn owners have in a concurrent thread been bemoaning some really good Thorn bikes that fell by the wayside, in part because there were too many other attractive bikes in the range, true until the recent rationalization of the range. It happens to any innovative manufacturer sooner or later, and then there are often bargains to be had, with the added incentive that they're likely to become classics because nobody wanted them when they were current...
