Don't Try This With Your Car

As I've mentioned in other posts, the bicycle is the progenitor of the automobile and the airplane.  It's no coincidence that the earliest inventors and innovators in the automotive and aviation worlds were bicycle mechanics, designers or makers.  After all, almost everything--including pneumatic tires and ball bearings-- that has made the car faster than the horse and the airliner more viable as a transoceanic and transcontinental form of transport than the ship or the wagon had its origins on the bicycle. 

So, it's both strange and makes perfect sense that bicycles and cycling should be used to sell cars.  The practice seems to have become more common in recent years.  I don't watch much TV these days, but I have seen commercials in which a paceline snakes along a road that rims seaside cliffs--with, of course, the car approaching and passing.

But I haven't seen a commercial with freestyle BMXers in it.  This video takes us behind the scenes as such a commercial was made:



I must say that after watching Bike Parkour, I'm not sure I'd want to buy the car that's being advertised. After all, even the most nimble motor vehicles couldn't make the jumps, hops, turns and stops the Parkour riders make on their bikes with 20 inch wheels.  I mean, driving almost anything would seem boring after that!

And no one could navigate the streets of New York  in any motor vehicle the way Desmond Rhodes does on his bike:





Now, there's proof that you don't need a car in the Big Apple!