No kid-aged auto enthusiast ever saw their bicycle as just a bike. It was the only transportation device we were allowed to have, so you can be damn sure we were going to add lights, speedometers, STP decals, and anything else to make it seem more like a car or motorcycle.
Bike manufacturers seemed to know that, and so they did their best to make their products aspirational things that took on the qualities of automobiles our pre-driver’s-license selves dreamed of. That dream car changed over the years, but for 1985 Raleigh had their finger on the pulse of Colecovision and Tron-watching youth; and boy, did they deliver an over-the-top product for them.
Knight Rider Knockoff
Last week, Pete recalled how kids of the sixties and seventies wanted bikes that looked like dragsters or motorcycles ridden by the Bad Element of society. The Schwinn Sting Ray started the trend in 1963, followed by such fancifully named versions as the Orange Krate and Lemon Peeler.
The coolest “muscle bike” of them all to me, however, was released across the pond in England for 1969: the Raleigh Chopper.
Designed by the firm Ogle (who also penned the Bond Bug and Reliant Scimitar cars), the Chopper featured a dramatic, angular frame design and a gear selector mounted to a console-like perch on the crossbar:
This was the ultimate in cool at the time, but times naturally change. By the early eighties, most of us kids wouldn’t even know what Easy Rider was, but a 14-inch Sony at home pumped our brains full of vehicles that screamed “space age technology.” This was stuff from the future, like the year 2000.
We needed to be calmed down in a dark, quiet room after seeing the commercial for the new 1984 C4 Corvette dodging lasers with its Millennium Falcon instruments:
The C4 was like a real-life manifestation of the 1982 Trans Am in Knight Rider, minus the bulletproof skin and The Hoff’s chest hair.
Seemingly always late to the party or wasting time on After School Specials we didn’t care about, the ABC network took three years to answer for K.I.T.T. with a television show called Street Hawk.
This one had actor and one-hit-wonder pop star Rex Smith as a loner on a computerized dirt bike that gets missions assigned to him by the dude from Murphy Brown (Joe Regalbuto).
Here’s the voiceover during the opening credits:
This is Jesse Mach, an ex-motorcycle cop, injured in the line of duty. Now a police troubleshooter, he’s been recruited for a top secret government mission to ride Street Hawk — an all-terrain attack motorcycle designed to fight urban crime, capable of incredible speeds up to three hundred miles an hour, and immense firepower. Only one man, federal agent Norman Tuttle, knows Jesse Mach’s true identity. The man…the machine…Street Hawk.
So, yeah, it’s about a Knight Industries Two Thousand minus two wheels that doesn’t talk. The bikes were based on a 1983 Honda XL500 trail bike and later a 1984 XR500 with electric-start engines from Honda’s Ascot, making the Streethawks possibly the first electric-start dual-sport bikes ever. A high-tech bike that goes 300 mph can’t have a kick-starter, right? Reportedly, the stuck-on bodywork was a constant problem for the production crews as the parts continually flew off, especially during stunt work.
It’s hard to believe the show lasted for a whole season of 13 episodes, but if you were under the age of 13 at the time, you probably thought it was Godfather-level drama. You also imagined the Street Hawk had a lot more in common with the Schwinn you rode to school each day than it did with Michael Knight’s Pontiac. A company with some savvy marketing people would have seen that as well; surprisingly, it wasn’t a company in the United States that did.
Digital Overground
The Raleigh Chopper had obviously fallen out of favor with kids by the early eighties, but the British firm was continually developing new products. For 1982, they launched the Burner series of BMX bikes.
With distinctive gusseted frames and pad sets, they were easily the most successful products of the genre in the UK, selling over 500,000 examples in the first two years they were available.
Still, a BMX bike is a BMX bike; Raleigh really wanted something to totally wow the public like the cutting-edge Chopper had a decade earlier. Thankfully, someone must have caught a bit of American television programming and had a fever dream of what the Average Kid would find irresistible. Management gave the go-ahead to develop what was essentially going to be the “Chopper for the eighties,” a project that ultimately cost a reported 500,000 UK pounds (or around $650,000 in 1985, which would be about just over $2,000,000 today).
Raleigh named the new 1985 model “Vektar.” It was built on a Burner frame and fork with “5 Spoke I.C.I. AMX9 Mag Wheels,” which makes them sound considerably more high-tech than the simple Skyway knock-offs they were. The bike was kitted out with “unbreakable” polyurethane mudguards and brutally angular trim pieces that looked like pieces of a Star Wars stormtrooper’s armor.
If anyone asks you, “what was eighties design like?” you can show them a picture of the Vektar. It’s just glorious; you can hear Tangerine Dream music just looking at it. I love those metal band letters and that spelling – they obviously didn’t want Vector Motor’s Gerry Weigert suing them (and he absolutely would).
Ah, but that’s just the base-model Vektar. The real party trick was the loaded Vektar, which Raliegh dubbed the “World’s First Computer Bike.” Oh yeah. What you got was a big, heavy console on the upper frame, not totally unlike the earlier Chopper, but instead of a cable-pulling lever, the Vektar’s console was packed with electronic goodies. Mainly useless goodies, but electronic.
You got an LCD speedometer at the top of what was jokingly called a “heads down” display with a bar graph for speed under a MPH/KMPH bar display. With a touch of a membrane-style button, you could switch to elapsed time or distance. Geez, even your mum’s Ford didn’t have this sh*t.
It’s totally pointless and cheesy. Also, I need to get one of these right away.
Below the digital display was an “audio system,” essentially an AM radio with three preset stations above a control panel for the “sound generator.” It even came with a whip antenna you could install on the back of your Vektar.
The sound system offered eight cheesy sound effects, activated by a rocker level next to the handgrips. Raleigh even provided a blank space for “any new device” in the future. Sadly, I don’t see that any “new devices” were ever available, and the Vektar itself doesn’t seem to have lasted very long on the market either. What happened?
@boysandgirlsofknocka In 1985 The ‘Vektar’ is the world’s first high-technology bike, developed at a cost of more than £500,000 and the successor to the best selling ‘Chopper’. Revolutionary features include a radio boasting three channels, a sound synthesiser programmed with eight re-set high-tech sounds and a computer equipped to calculate speed, distance and time of journeys#ireland#bike#1985 fyp#fypシ #fypシ゚viral #foryou #foryoupage #follow#nostolgia
The Future Was Expensive
Exact sales figures are not available, but estimates are that only 50,000 to 100,000 Vektars were made before Raleigh pulled the plug sometime around 1987. Sadly, the Vektar never made it across the Atlantic to sell here in America.
While Raleigh’s Chopper was significantly different from the other bikes of the time, it was rather obvious that the Vektar was a dressed-up Burner BMXer with not a lot to differentiate it besides the silly details and dubious tech. What’s worse is Raleigh asked a relatively small fortune for this thing in an attempt to recoup development costs. The “base” Vektar started at around 200 UK pounds, while adding the center console with all of its trickery pushed the price to nearly 300 (that’s around $400 in 1985, or a whopping $1,200 in today’s money). That’s a big chunk of change for what amounts to a rather silly toy with a bunch of battery-powered junk on it.
But what junk! It’s no wonder that surviving examples are prized by collectors today; one perfect example reportedly sold in Australia for the equivalent of $4000 US dollars. The Vektar was a glorious example of eighties design, the “cassette era futurism” of seven-segment displays and grids over stylized gradient sunsets. With a Vektar, you could have been the Street Hawk of the suburban streets, at least until dinner or homework time.
Top graphic images: Raleigh
Oh man, the CFBs shattering as the C4 did the sloalam? Be stll my beating heart.
A radio and an antenna? I just had a retroactive envy attack.
Holy shit, I had a Vektar. The noise makers were insanely loud and I was too self-conscious and people-pleasy to use them. Without them, it was just a heavy unremarkable bike and I didn’t ride it much. 🙁
A friend had a Chopper, or a clone of it. It was awesome. The seat shell was that 80s soft plastic that didn’t even try to look like leather, and it got wrapped in black tape fairly quickly.
I haven’t thought about that bike in a long time. Thanks for reigniting a lifetime of latent guilt for pestering my parents for one and proceeding not to ride it. 🙁
Forget Street Hawk, I’m in for Warrior of the Lost World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW55BgVBFpw
And lets not forget Airwolf too
loving the old skool bike content!
Just me and the boys riding our bikes, me on my Vektar, blasting some… Paul Harvey on the radio.
Yeah, the whole AM thing kinda blows it.
and now we know “The rest of the story”
Is that guy wearing golf pants? Or are those pajamas? I mean, they look cool I guess, it’s just a weird choice for riding around on your computer bike in those damp looking woods.
Suit up in a Pac-man tee, don the calculator watch, and grab all the quarters you can carry. It’s time for an arcade-run on the Vektar with the digital readout set to kms for maximum velocity. Today is the day we shall achieve Kill-Screen!
I don’t remember ever even hearing about these. That’s rich kid stuff, though none of the kids with parents with money (or divorced dads trying to buy favor) I grew up with would have wanted it. That crap would have gotten thrown away after the batteries ran out (after approximately 10 minutes of use like nearly everything powered by batteries back then). The kids with money had expensive freestyle or BMX bikes. Would be neat to have in an appropriate collection today, though. Love these bike articles!
And now, let’s all drool together at the Yamaha BYZ-501 BMX bike, never imported in the US, CrMo frame made by Tange, and 3800 Francs in the early 80s (about $600).
I had a picture. Sigh.
Can anyone enlighten me on the random “post waiting for approval” slammed on my useless prose?
Been here for years, and I don’t mind moderation, but not 100% random robotic one. WTF?!?
Posting here because the communication channels with humans at the helm are, errr… not seemingly part of the site.
The content filter seems to be pretty elementary and gets tripped by certain words, like the adjective describing members of the NSDAP.
It was my post for the BYZ-501. Sorta several levels detached from anything.
I’ve ridden a titanium copy of the Raleigh Chopper. It was made by a guy that worked at Merlin Metalworks (early Ti bike manufacturer), who named it Mjollnir (this was back when only dorks knew the name of Thor’s hammer and could name more than 5 hobbits.)
Here’s Mjollnir’s delighfully Web one-point-oh web page.
https://scul.org/ships/Mjollnir
Also, “Street Hawk” sounds an awful lot like the movie “Cyclone”, except in that one the whiz-bang mad motor scooter can only be ridden by a girl!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092812/
(I had a computer on my bicycle until 2010 when it fell into a sewer and I realized it was completely superfluous.)
Middle class divorce became popular at around the same time. I was a very unlikely nanny back then, it was fun. If your day job is making sure that an ever increasing number of childerses were going to survive then, these were referred to as dad divorce bikes. Bought for eight to ten year olds. Thankfully they could be a Burner with a bit of smashing stuff. Give a ten year old a hammer to express what he, or she thinks about Daddy.
Funny you’d say that. My parents got me a Vektar maybe 4 years before their marriage disintegrated. The bike stayed in the basement when we moved out (with my mom) and my dad kept the house. Until he lost it because of his obscene lifestyle spending. Which this bike was hardly the worst of. It might still be in there!
This article feels like the Bishop mostly looking for a reason to be able to write about Street Hawk. Which I am 100% here for. Heck, I’d be down for a piece on Ray’s relatively mundane ’65 Corvette in Stingray.
Man – forgot about that short lived show. I built the Monogram? model kit tie in.
If you’re interested, Tubi has the entire two season run. It holds up well, if only b/c of the minimalism of the character.
I LOVED watching Street Hawk as an almost 10-year old in 1985, and I was completely bummed out when it was cancelled. This was appointment viewing for me and I watched each one live (who could program our 300-lb VCR?).
The opening credits of The Goldbergs feature the exact giant VCR we had. Not shown – the wired remote.
Bicentenial baby – my childhood was The Dukes of Hazard, Knight Rider, AirWolf, The A-Team, MacGuyver. Miami Vice as I got a bit older. Don’t even start on the cartoons we had. What a glorious time to be a (male) child.
Right on! Mine also included Fall Guy, Automan, Blue Thunder (both the movie and short-lived tv show), Real American Hero was fun, throw Hard Castle and McCormick in there for good measure, and if the parents weren’t paying attention on the weekends it was sometimes possible to stay up and catch Night Flight.
The Fall Guy came on at my bedtime back in the day… Just after Dukes IIRC. I still know the theme music though.
“…cause I’m the unknown stuntman that makes Eastwood look so fine.”
Definitely a classic. I do remember some bedtime arguments revolving around tv shows, but I was usually able to catch what I wanted. We only had three channels and my dad would generally watch whatever it was I wanted to anyway, so I’d sneak out of my room and sit in the hallway. At least until the night I was caught and the parents re-arranged the living-room.
We had basic cable from ’81 or so – I remember dad and a neighbor ripping the massive antennae off the chimney. Amazing how ’80s life seemingly revolved around the TV. Now I barely care – I’ll stream an interesting series or two and that’s about it.
I remember those big aerial antennas well. A friend of mine had one even into the cable era. It was the only way we could pull in the Simpsons and it had to be set just so. So, every Sunday evening, we’d get the ladder out, he’d be up on on the roof, and I’d be down in the basement trying to describe the picture quality over an old walkie-talkie. We’d have to start this process a good 30 minutes before the show would actually start in order to pull in the signal and get the VCR setup to record.
I used to fake going to bed so my little brother would go to sleep in his room. Then get back up and finish the movie or show.
I think you mean Greatest American Hero. “Believe it or not…”
“…I’m walking on air…”
That’s the one (my memory is just starting to fade a bit)!
I loved that kit car in Hard Castle & McCormick that could drive under a semi trailer! That guy didn’t even need to jump his car through the trailer like most other heroes of the time!
What a glorious time to be a [white] (male) child [of parents who had college degrees].
I mounted a CB radio on my bike in the 80’s, complete with a 12v gel cell battery and a 6 foot whip antenna.
Wow. I thought I was hot shit when I built a Ham radio into a motorcycle during the pandemic lockdown.
Hats off to you! Not just a walkie-talkie type CB (those never worked), but the full on base station? Curly lead to a handheld mic?
This is the bike the Whiz Kids would have ridden. Props to you if you remember that TV show. Street Hawk did have a much better theme than Knight Rider, performed by Tangerine Dream.
I’ll allow it was a better tune (an actual piece of repurposed art rock), but the Knight Rider theme is iconic, as recognizable as any of the driving instrumentals used for the 80s action-adventure heavyweights – the A-Team, Airwolf, Macgyver, and probably the best, Magnum PI.
Wow, a lot of nostalgia in those BMX photos.
My Ross Snapper BMX with yellow Skyway Tuff Wheel 2s ruled the neighborhood in the early ’80s. Those Tuff Wheels made all the kids with their hand-me-down Schwinns and Raleighs quake in their boots!
Still got it. It’s in the barn, and someday I’ll restore it.
I vaguely recall being quite jealous of a friend’s bike that had a little analog speedometer added to the handlebar, it was mechanical and connected to this little “spider” thing that clipped onto the front wheel spokes to drive a cable. It went up to 40mph, even with a “redline” between 30 and 40mph. Of course being kids, that signified going over 30mph was dangerous so therefore cool and the entire goal. It was on a single speed BMX bike (this was circa 2000 so BMX was all the rage), and pedaling as fast as possible would only get you to about 20, so finding a hill steep and long enough to try and go 40 was the mission all summer. I don’t remember if it ever happened, the following summer everyone was on the Razor scooter hype train and we were just smashing them into our ankles and shins all summer and burning our feet on the brake pedal thingy. Despite them objectively sucking ass as a form of transportation, the TV said they were cool and fun and you could do tricks on them so gosh darnit we weren’t going to be riding any lame old bicycles around.
For no other reason than to brag, my top self-powered/flat land bicycling speed is somewhere between 38 and 40mph, and my highest downhill speed was 55mph.
I am appalled that no one mentioned BMX Bandits, with a very young and very redheaded Nicole Kidman in a very Australian movie that made it all the way to Eastern Europe.
Is there a better actor name than Angelo D’Angelo?
These ads also highlight another very 80’s thing that you might not have noticed if you didn’t live through that time period. The bigger dude is not wearing flannel pants. He’s wearing printed jeans! Usually more associated with the women’s versions with flowers or swirls, there were guys’ models that were plaid or striped.
Also the idea of helmets was totally unheard of and now people are appalled by photos like these.
Helmets? Seat belts? Child seats? Come on, let’s toss some lawn darts.
Wouldn’t be complete without second-hand smoke.
I got plenty of that…
And drinking leaded paint straight from the garden hose.
Smoking was everywhere, all the time.
Only the ripping dorks or nerds with overprotective parents actually wore those. They were also big ugly affairs. One kid in the neighborhood was supposed to wear one, but he would ditch it in a neighbor’s bushes and we’d ride somewhere he wouldn’t be seen or he wouldn’t ride a bike at all. Those helmets were about the worst thing you could do to a kid back then. The drop in social standing assured a self esteem all but sure to remain on the back foot with serious negative emotional consequences going forward as those self esteem issues perpetuated themselves by inclination to bitter personality or poor decision making. Thankfully, that appeared to be a rare issue. Few things are more dangerous than a large number of angry dorks who couldn’t get laid in HS and college.
Bicycle helmets were things only Stewart (from Beavis and Butt-Head) or the Flanders kids would wear.
As a matter of fact, I was very much aware of helmets, but those were for motorcycles and scooters and mopeds. The idea of wearing a helmet on a bicycle never even occurred to anybody, much like nobody even thinks of wearing a welder’s apron to the beach.
I still don’t wear one on the street. If a 5k pound SUV hits me, I have no faith in a severely overpriced piece of recycled coffee cup to mitigate anything of meaning, studies have shown cars get closer to people wearing helmets (Is this the perceived greater safety for the wearer as the study contended or does the dehumanizing look of a helmet put the wearer into “annoying cyclist” category instead of being a human on a bicycle?), and the aero profile that tapers at the rear can wrench the neck in a slide. I wear a boonie hat as I think sun damage to my skin is a more sure threat (and people always say I look younger than I am, so it’s probably doing something). When I used to mountain bike, though, I wore one as I can definitely see it helping there.
I still feel like a huge dork wearing a bike helmet, definitely the opposite of rad, but I’ve conceded it’s probably the right thing to do. It just wasn’t a thing for most of my life.
Never had these printed jeans, but I did have Lee jeans where the fronts were gray denim and the backs were dark blue, LOL…good times, indeed!
Oh, and NO ONE wore helmets in the mid-80’s…only picked one up in like 1993 as an 18-year old when I seriously got into mountain biking!
Man, I’d love to add a Chopper – a Raleigh, though I would also like an OCC Stingray – to the collection, but they’re rare outside the British sphere of influence and we kinda decided we didn’t want to be part of it 250 years ago.
The Vektar, on the other hand, is the most ’80s Sh’mup name ever applied to a bicycle. And it looks like it too. Of course, these days all you need is a smart watch or phone holder and you have that functionality. Except maybe picking up AM radio. Can get Spotify though, I guess.
Slightly related note: I recently added the nearly as cool named but way lamer Murray Bio-Tech to my collection. Don’t get excited, it’s an early Hybrid MTB (meaning mtb style frame but more comfy seating and bars for bike path/street use) that was styled to look like a piece of gym equipment.
Did it have a BioPace drivetrain? I love early hybrids and have 3 of them, one of which I just finished converting to an e-bike. Two are chromoly frames and you can pick them up for almost nothing. They ride nicely, are fairly light (well, until I get a hold of them) and are versatile. Mine are Giants that were largely 700c MTBs.
Oh, noooo, this is a Murray, that means cheap. It’s my Grandpa’s old bike, and it was kinda sad since he can’t ride it anymore so it kinda sat. Also it’s just a late ’80s/early ’90s vibe. I’ve got new tires and brake pads coming that are worth more than the bike is, but I don’t care. I’m weird like that.
My police-auction-bought Bianchi Forza has BioPace though!
I ended up dating a great woman because she had a pic of herself on a Bianchi, it was artsy and a bit blurry, but she looked exuberant, if difficult to determine specific features. Due to the blur, I was unsure if the two pics she had were unflattering pics of an attractive woman or not far off the truth. Odds weren’t great as she messaged me, but I took the chance because of the Bianchi. Glad I did as they were bad pics and she was a smart, creative, sweetheart, unfortunately she was running from something—past, self, whatever—so it didn’t work out. She was also Italian. And had the same birthday as another Italian dancer ex. I have a very specific type. Anyway, Bianchi! It was even Celeste.
My Miyata 1000 LT has BioPace. It’s interesting. I don’t know how much it helps, but it doesn’t seem to hurt—my knees inexplicably don’t care for the bike whether with BioPace rings or round.
My ACME rocket bike was my late mother’s Giant step-through hybrid. A bit small for me, but I ride it a lot as it rides well and everyone loves it. It cheers people up to see it and I can always use reminders that most people are OK as it’s a conversation starter.
Bike tires are expensive compared to cars and I don’t know if it’s because I grew up when the cool BMX bikes had colored tires, but almost all my bikes have them. My two Giants have different annual limited edition Panaracers that match the bike colors because I’m a nerd. My bikes are mostly odd customs, so they’ve all had more spent on them than they’re worth, but even expensive new bikes are almost always bad as investments. The value for me is in the results and they’re much cheaper than cars, easier to store, and I can do much of the work in the living room with the TV on in the background. Even without those perks, though, I enjoy working on bikes a lot more than cars. Only thing I’m not big on is building wheels. I’ve done at least a 1/2 dozen and I can get them 85% there, but that last bit eludes me. I can get them true, but then they’re a little ovalized and if I get rid of the oval, the spoke tension is all over the place, so I usually have them finished at a shop.
That appears to have been inspired by the console from some late 1960s Mopars, like this one from a 1967 Barracuda:
https://hips.hearstapps.com/mtg-prod/65cc0cfb4cb8920008cadbac/mopp-0906-06-z-1967-plymouth-barracuda-front-view.jpg?w=768&width=768&q=75&format=webp
Oooooh
Barracoooda
That comment has a lot of heart
What did a Mongoose fully dressed BMX cost in 1985? I always wanted one as a kid 1982-83ish, by 85 I was a senior in high school and probably too cool for one.
$1200 modern sounds like A LOT for some cheap plastic and AM radio.
Yeah, but it goes BEEP BOP BOOP when you push the membrane switches.
Which were not responsive at all. Kind of like the keys on a cheap microwave. When they did work, they made the loudest imaginable siren type sound, almost as loud as an ambulance or cop car. No joke.
Whatever it cost it was too rich for my parent’s blood. I got some shitty knock off BMX that was terrible in every way.
Yeah, I don’t see that thing appealing to any kids older than 10, not here or in the UK. And not many dads would want to throw that kind of money at a bike that he’d be getting, let’s face it, to replace the one the kid utterly destroyed jumping over trash bins. Electronic gizmos or no, air time is in this thing’s future. We’ll get something a bit less spendy and, admittedly, breakable.
Or like my homie’s that had a shock absorber on the rear
Damn those 1970s big wheels. Blow molded plastic of that era must have just been stronger. Jump vehicle, stunt vehicle, and getaway car when Grandma said it was nap time. Indestructible
I never had a Big Wheel, but lots of the kids around me did. I remember the Duke/KITT ones had a “Spinout Lever” that would now be called a drift brake. I do recall the glee of locking the wheel on the right to spin out.
I wanted the KITT one really badly, but the nearest paved road to my house was 5 miles away at the bottom of the mountain I lived on, and Big Wheels didn’t do well off-pavement.
I think the spinout lever was common or standard as I can’t recall seeing one without it. Mine had them and it was pre Knight Rider and all that. If they had a generic, un-themed one, that would be what I had.
Can confirm that the spinout levers were common across the genre. I tell kids these days and the response is the same “how did y’all survive being kids in the 70’s and 80’s? But it sounds like it was more fun”
The weak didn’t survive or they at least had to toughen up or become psychopaths to compensate (maybe more in the movie sense less than the clinical one, but I’m not a psychologist). Kid in my class in parochial school who had been at the very bottom of the social food chain is serving 14 years for torturing a woman he held hostage for months, disfigured, and nearly killed. His defense was that he was training her in MMA (he had a TMA school) and, IIRC, he fired his lawyers and represented himself. He had been living in FL (of course) and had apparently come back up to MA to escape repercussions from beating a stripper GF (according to the detective in the case when I talked to her). He had a long history of stalking and harassment. Even as a kid, he had been a pathological liar, underhanded, and wussy. Some might question which came first, the chicken or the psycho, but having known him from kindergarten, it was the latter. I like to think we could sense it, like sick animals in a group that are taken out by peers to save the whole from a potential pathogen. My mother didn’t even like him and she liked kids, but had a good sense for cluster Bs (not to be confused with the far cooler Wu Tang Killer Bees), even if she didn’t have the sense to avoid them.
Not too much stronger, though I bet they were blow molded with thicker walls. But when I was a kid I remember seeing a lot of Big Wheels that were developing cracks or, after a couple of summers of living outdoors under the blazing sun, becoming so brittle that even one decent bump would cause the whole thing to just shatter in half.
Every Big Wheel I ever rode had a big flat spot… thump, thump, thump…..
Or the “tread” cracked off and you were running on two thin rims, like the end of every LA cars chase video, only with melting plastic smell instead of sparks
Big Wheel, the machine that taught gen X how to powerslide a front-wheel-drive.
And FWD cars were easier! The big wheel had most of the weight on the rear wheels
Nothing gets you air time like a Big Wheel. That you just sent down the hill with your little brother on it, towards a plywood ramp. While you watch. Because your parents have no idea where you are. GenX kid life.
So, which one of you was the younger brother? (and unwilling test pilot)
The test pilot was willing. Stupid, but willing. Beyond that, I’m not saying
How did us Gen-X kids survive? I swear my partner wanted to wrap our now 21 YO daughter in bubble wrap before leaving the house. I’ve been told every bump, bruise,scar happened on my watch. It’s a kid, not a porcelain doll.
Wooden Radio Flyer + hill = FUNNN. Just ditch in the grass, you’ll be fine.
I used to bomb down the dead end hill we lived on when I was 3, but it was completely safe because I knew to spin it out to a stop before the end of the road!
Yeah, as I recall, the plastic bits on the 90s Huffy Mudslinger didn’t hold up all too well, so how durable could even more plastic + a bunch of electronics be
Yep, which is why the Huffy Thunder 50 was so well-liked. Relatively inexpensive and made of steel so it would stand up to a lot of abuse before you broke it. I used to bomb down pipeline maintenance roads in the Rockies on mine. Broke myself a few times, but never the bike.
My brother had some sort of steel framed low slung big wheel trike, we broke it and had to get the frame welded. I had a steel framed normal trike.
Huffy Green Machine? Was it rear-steer?
No. It changed from a traditional trike to low swung big wheel by swapping the headset/wheel orientation. I’m guessing ’85 ? No idea on the manufacturer after 40 years or so. It was black with blue and orange decals.
I think I know what you’re talking about, but if it’s what I’m thinking, I didn’t know they were reversible. The one I’m thinking of had twin steel tubes and a high back plastic seat with a fork that had a kind of plate crown so that each fork leg was also half of the handlebar on that respective side. The one I’m thinking of seems like it certainly could have been reversible as far as my memory can be trusted. A cousin or someone had one and it was far more durable than a Big Wheel, but heavier by the same margin. No idea who made them and I don’t recall seeing it in new condition, so I don’t recall a sticker (or one that was intact), not that I’d probably remember what it said.
My sister got my nephew a bike that could be flipped to make it bigger as he got older, but IIRC, it was some modernish plastic thing.