More Choppers!

 Even with all of my cycling experiences, there is one that I don’t share with some other members of my generation.  I never had one of those bikes that was styled so that kids could pretend they were riding motorcycles.  You know the kind I mean:  the ones with “banana” seats, “ape-hanger” handlebars and “stick” shifters strategically located (on the top tube) to, it seemed, reduce our generation’s fertility rate.

Such bikes included the spectrum Schwinn’s Sting-Ray bicycles (the original S-R and the Lemon Peeler, Pea Picker, the Orange and Apple Krates and the long-rumored Grape Krate) and their imitators from other American bike manufacturers.

That genre also included the Raleigh Chopper. Like the Sting-Ray, they have a loyal following among those who rode them in their childhood and, apparently, some who use them as compact or travel bikes—sort of like a Raleigh Twenty that doesn’t fold.

Last month, Raleigh released a near-as-possible reproduction run that sold out in days.  Now another run—based on the MK2 model—is set to be released next Tuesday, the 25th.  After that, Raleigh says, there will be no more.

Some of the parts used on the 1970s Choppers (and Sting-Rays) are long out of production and the companies that made them have gone out of business (or simply the bike business) or been absorbed into other companies.  Among those companies is Sturmey-Archer, which went into receivership in 2000 and was purchased by the Taiwanese company SunRace.  S-A made the three-speed hub found on the Chopper MK II (and those classic English three-speed bikes)—and the “stick” shifter. Raleigh had to work with S-A (SunRace kept the brand alive) to replicate a hub that looks like the original—and the “sterilization” shifter!