From Surly Blog:
Big Dummy Progress
It's looking more like August until we'll see the Big Dummy here in stock. Why?
We originally had one single prototype built before the Interbike tradeshow in October. This bike ended up getting ridden by Dave and myself for about 6-8 weeks before we decided to make some changes. Dave is still putting huge miles on this 1st proto, despite t-boning a car and raking the headtube a few months ago.
Those changes ended up on the second round of prototypes, which we started riding in January. Having 8 prototypes altogether, there were enough to go around the office so we were all able to give our input on performance, geometry and any other small or large thing that needed changing. As it has turned out, they rode great and exceeded my personal expectations. But there were a few more things, mostly subtle, that we wanted changed.
So now we're having a third round of prototypes built soon and will likely start riding those around the end of May. It takes this long because there are tooling changes necessary and it simply takes that long to build, paint and ship.
The most important thing is that when we approve this bike for production, we're 100% positive it's exactly what we want in a longtail cargo bike. We hope it's worth the wait.
As for color, we still don't know what color it'll be. But barring the unforeseen 4th round of prototypes, these monsters should be in stores around August of this year. Thanks for being patient.