Originally Posted by Airburst

It's made by Viking, it's a 700c-wheeled step-through frame. Kind of set up as a cruiser at the moment, with a 7-speed rear cluster and a single chainring. I bought it off a friend of mine, after she stopped using it because she couldn't get up the hills around Guildford with the lowest gear on it, which I think is 46-28. I'll probably stick some pictures up here or in the utility bikes sub-forum as I do the mods to it.

The direct-drive low gear is a result of the way the hub works, it's basically three sequential epicyclic gear assemblies which can be switched from "pass drive directly" to "gear up by a given amount". The hub uses different combinations of the three epicyclic assemblies in each of those two modes to achieve different ratios, and I'd imagine SA decided having direct drive at the bottom was better than reversing the whole mechanism and having it at the top. The design does make it cheaper than the comparable hubs from Shimano and SRAM, which I suspect is why they did it. Their old 7-speed hub had direct drive in 4th gear, but that was based on the design of the 5-speed one they still make, which has its own issues (namely closer spacing of the low gears and wide spacing of the high ones, the opposite of what most riders want), and so the 8-speed was designed from the ground up.

I'm no stranger to SA drum brake hubs, my current utility bike has an X-RD3 and an X-FD, and the front hub for this build is a BF. I like them for bikes that see a lot of use in crappy weather.

I did consider using the hub on a folding bike with 20" wheels, but my folding bike is fitted with an S2C from SA at the moment, and I like the cable-less aspect of that rather a lot.