CHOP TILL YOU DROP
For cyclists of a certain age, there is only one ride
It was plodding, a bit on the heavy side, tricky to ride ... and prone to landing its owners in an unceremonious heap on the sidewalk.
Once written off as nothing more than a hazardous gimmick that would endanger a generation of unsuspecting children, it’s also a cultural icon as much loved now as it was more than half a century ago when it first rolled into showrooms. Chopper, take a bow. With the global pandemic stirring a fresh wave of interest in cycling, never have the joys of the humble bike been more apparent. And the British-made Raleigh Chopper, with its T-bar gear shifter, high backrest and curved handlebars, was a memory-maker like no other.
Its very English design was inspired by trends across the pond: the “chopped” motorcycles of Harley-davidson and the dragsters burning up the strips with their power-harnessing large back wheels — and the much smaller ones up front.
Like many a cultural icon, however, its origins are debated.
The colourful yarn has it that Alan Oakley, who worked as a chief designer at Raleigh in the 1960s, sketched a crude version of the Chopper on the back of an envelope during a flight home from the U.S. in 1967, where chopped Harleys were captivating America’s first generation of ‘easy riders’ — later made legendary in the 1969 Peter Fonda film.
Not so, says designer Tom Karen, whose Ogle Design firm was solicited by Raleigh to create a bike that would rival Schwinn’s much-admired 1963 Sting-ray, then being eagerly customized in California with highrise handlebars, banana seats and undersized front wheels.
It was his idea, he told the Daily Mail in 2014, to use mismatched wheels and the long padded seats that would become trademark features when the Chopper first went into production in 1969. And he has the sketchbooks to prove it.
Wherever the credit lies, there’s no doubting its phenomenal sales success. Between 1969 and 1983, some 1.5 million Raleigh Choppers
were sold worldwide, earning cult status with collectors, spawning global fan clubs and cementing itself as a baby-boomer touchstone.
It was a rough ride at first. The original ‘Mark 1’ model, which had a flat seat rather than the sloping one familiar today, was beset by safety glitches, including a shaky frame at high speeds and an unsettling propensity for performing unplanned ‘wheelies.’
Riders also scorned the seat, which invited doubling up with no warnings of the potential hazards. It had all the makings of a marketing disaster. Give it the chop, said the British press, which branded the two-wheeler nothing more than a “dangerous toy.”
Stung by the criticism, Raleigh made several fixes for the Mark 2 model. Produced from 1972 to 1979 and exported widely, this version of the Chopper included a shorter sloping seat with an attached disclaimer: not meant for passengers. It has been described as possibly the most ignored warning in the history of the bicycle.
Fortunately, the big-wheel/ small-wheel combo remained, giving lots of scope for outrageous skids and wheelies, though the latter was complicated by a swift tipping point that too often ended with show-offs flat on their backs as unsympathetic pals laughed from the sidelines.
What excited most youngsters, though, was the jazzy 3-speed shift lever mounted on the frame between a rider’s legs. This was pure motor-racing stuff, a grownup thrill for every kid dreaming of driving their first car or throttling through the gears on a real motorbike. Rich kids even got a deluxe five-speed model with two handles to shift.
Manufactured by the Raleigh Bicycle Company in Nottingham, England, the Chopper was eventually doomed by the BMX craze of the 1980s. But the Midlands firm, capitalizing on our insatiable appetite for nostalgia, rolled out a Mark 3 version in 2004 that was safer and lighter yet lacked much of what gave its predecessors their charm — they removed the gear lever!
U.K. bike security experts Litelok,
which has tracked the Chopper phenomenon, says while the 2004 bicycle struck a chord with memory-lane parents, it never really caught on with a new generation of youngsters and lasted only a few years before being discontinued.
Still, there’s life in the old steed yet. Milwaukee-based Harley-davidson, whose motorized hogs kicked off the whole thing, is drawing on its own retro flair with a chopper-style electric bike, part of a series of one-off e-bikes to be sold to the highest bidder. The first one off the line has “some seriously ‘60s chopper bicycle vibes,” with a long-and-low banana seat and highrise handlebars.
The Chopper bike trend grew out of the 1970s cycling boom that in many respects resembles today’s resurgence in two-wheeling. But as the public-health crisis slowly abates, it remains uncertain whether it will last any longer than the one from 40 years ago.
For any kid growing up in the 1970s and early 1980s, however, that’s beside the point: the Chopper will always be our ride for the ages.