Get a Swift.
I think Wavshrdr was referring to me, BruceMetras, and Jollydriver when he mentioned "race Swifts you see around here".
Point being that if you check-out the Swift thread, you probably won't see so many different incarnations of a folding bike. You can go sparse with a single-speed/fixed-gear configuration, to a sharp road bike, to a cyclocross machine, to a more luxurious and styled configuration, and practically anything else in between. The Swift can accomodate an internal gear hub, 8/9 speed cassette, fixed gear, or single-speed conversion. The rear dropouts are spaced at 132.5mm, which allows you to slightly compress them to fit any 130mm road bike hub, or slightly expand them to fit any 135mm mountain bike hub. The horizontal dropouts allow you to run the gamut of extremes: from a quick-release mountain hub on the weekdays, to a solid-axle fixed track hub on the weekends. The stem post accepts any standard 1 1/8" threadless stem, which opens-up the front-end to an infinite number of configuration options as well: from a flat mountain bar, to drop bars, to bullhorn time-trial bars, and even those funky mustache bars as spec'ed on the new Hon Solo.
And when it comes to parts and maintenance, the only parts that are non-standard on the Swift, meaning parts you can't get from your LBS, are the stem post and the seat post. Everything else can be swapped-out for off-the-shelf bike parts (I've thrown an eclectic mix of PerformanceBike and misc parts from mountain bike/bmx/single-speed web shops at my Swift with no fuss).
Service and support: the guys at Xootr have been nothing but helpful and responsive to my questions. When I asked Xootr for a custom single-speed wheel, they immediately forwarded my request to Peter Reich, designer of the Swift, who patiently put-up with my annoying questions and sold me the wheel that best suited my needs.
And to top it off, the bike folds!
