 Cheney had no formal training as a motorcycle designer yet was able to create original and high-performance motorcycle chassis designs working in a simple workshop that was essentially a domestic garage.His approach has been described as "like a medieval engineer" as in an age of computer-aided design and significant resources for research and development teams, he worked entirely by intuition.Eric relied on his long personal experience of international off-road competition riding and would prepare his initial designs for a new motorcycle frame in chalk on the wall of his workshop.