Today I learned that the Chopper is 40 years old, for the initiated The Chopper is a wedge shaped bike made by Raleigh in the UK. With odd sized tires (16 inch front, 20 inch back), a long banana saddle and three gears shifted with a stick shift it was unique and 10 year old Dave, like many boys growing up in the UK, had one.
OK, it was not the safest bike around. Handling was a little on the “sharp” side, turn too tight and down you went. Lean too far back and the front wheel came up, which resulted in a very impressive wheelie. Or for the less coordinated like me, more road rash.
It was really heavy, heavy in a way that kids brought up in a world of carbon fibre race bikes and fat aluminium tubed mountain bikes would not understand. This weight made it the perfect kids bike. In the years I owned one I was not exactly what you’d call gentle with it. It got well bashed, ridden into kerbs; over tree roots, down hills and all that ever broke was a brake cable. It broke at a rather inopportune moment and let to a close encounter with a tree. Not shockingly I came off rather worse for the encounter, but the bike was fine.
And this was in the days before the safety nazis insisted we all wear helmets. Yet somehow (occasionally to my fathers surprise) we managed to survive childhood.
There is a version still for sale new, but the whole point of the bike was destroyed by the health and safety people getting involved, they made it all boring, safe and sane.
The bike has some interesting roots. Tom Karen designed it; he spent most of his life designing cars, including the rather beautiful Scimitar GTE. It was not a perfect bike, but it looked good and when you are 11 that is just starting to become important.
It was clearly a kid’s bike, it was not a scaled down version of something an adult would ride. Although my dad did borrow mine for a week when I was 12 when his car was being repaired. He rode it 7 or 8 miles to work each day and I’d be impatiently waiting for him to get home so I could join my friends riding around Whitmore common. I recall he looked vaguely ridiculous on it; after all it was a kids bike.
There are a few for sale on EBay in the UK; they seem to be going for somewhere around $250 for one in decent condition, these are the proper ones, not the modern pretend Choppers. It perfectly represented the kid culture of the late 70’s and early 80’s, it was not safe, it was rather gaudy and rather against the rules. It was a perfect piece of design for the moment that was soon dated, but not because of looks, because the world moved on and that makes it very cool.
