The Raleigh Chopper was designed in response to the American bike from Schwinn – the
1963 Sting-Ray, which in turn was inspired by California kids who modified their bikes
to look more like choppers.
Sales of the Sting-Ray were initially slow as parents wanted more practical, sensible
bikes for their children.
Sales took off when the kids rebelled, demanding this bike and nothing else for Christmas!
By 1965 several American manufacturers were offering similar bikes, so Raleigh jumped
on the bandwagon.
With just a few changes from the standard bike frame, they updated the bike with a longer seat,
taller handlebars and a gear changer on the crossbar.
The bikes were sold in America as the Rodeo and Fireball, but Raleigh realised they needed
something to leapfrog the competition.
There’s some disagreement about how the Chopper came to be.
Raleigh’s official line is that Raleigh’s designer, Alan Oakley was on a fact-finding
trip to the US.
After seeing the Sting-Ray fad first-hand, he sketched his own version and Raleigh started
working on it once he returned.
Tom Karen also claims to have designed it.
He ran Ogle Designs, the company that styled the classic TR130 Bush radio, Bond Bug
and Reliant Scimitar GTE, and claims he also designed the Chopper, starting in 1966 with preliminary
meetings with Raleigh.
The British Design Council believes him as they gave him a lifetime achievement award
in 2002 and called out the Chopper for special praise.
Regardless of who came up with the idea, Raleigh prepared to take on competition around the
world with their new creation.
They filed for a US patent and launched the bike there first, but it was the UK market
where the Chopper got the most attention, selling for the princely sum of £34, around
£540 today ($750 USD, €625, $960 AUD).
With the promotion for the film “Easy Rider” fresh in kids minds, the Chopper was primed for success.
But this was a dramatically different bike to what Brits were used to.
The tiny front and large rear wheel, high handlebars, and long “banana” seat with
a pretend anti-roll bar on the back, a rear reflector that looked like a big rear light,
fat red-walled tyres, fake rear disc brake, and the kickstand that produced just the right
lean gave it the look of something every child was lusting after – a motorbike.
The Sturmey Archer 3 or rarely purchased 5 or 10-speed gear selector had the feel of
a gear stick and made every kid who rode one feel they were changing gears on a motorbike
or a car.
A single speed version was available but riding a bike like this without gears and without
the coolness of a gear changer can’t have helped your street cred.
Those who did have a gear changer had to learn the tricky process of changing gears with
one hand while keeping the tiny front wheel straight with those high-rise handlebars.
Regular handlebars with gears next to the brakes were much easier to control.
The long rear seat was crying out to give a friend a lift on the back, but putting too
much weight on the rear could make the front wheel rise unexpectedly.
Great for wheelies, if you were planning on doing one!
More concerning to Raleigh were reliability problems – the rear stays would separate
from the frame meaning expensive repairs or replacements.
So, the mk2 Chopper was brought out in 1972 that addressed many of these issues.
The shorter seat got a warning label telling kids they shouldn’t be giving their friends
a lift, not that kids would pay attention to that!
The rear frame got a significant change with the rear uprights bent forward so unwanted
wheelies wouldn’t launch you off the back of the bicycle!
By moving the seat forward, Raleigh was able to add a short rear rack for your lunchbox.
The handlebars were welded to the stem to stop children from inclining them backward,
thereby rendering the bicycle almost unsteerable!
The Chopper was a big hit for Raleigh and helped stave off bankruptcy as they moved
into the 1970s.
With it being so successful, it was perhaps natural that other models would appear.
The Chopper Sprint had dropped handlebars, and with a high seat looks like it would been
quite difficult to ride.
For younger kids, the Chipper and Tomahawk were available, without the testicle-crushing gear lever!
For even smaller children, the stabiliser-clad Budgie was the go-to bike.
Raleigh still had their eye on the US and another trend that was growing was BMXs.
Their answer was the 1976 Raleigh Grifter, along with smaller Strika and Boxer.
In the late 1970s there was definitely a Chopper camp and a Grifter camp,
and I was firmly in team Grifter!
But the Grifter weighed a ton and wasn’t effective as a BMX.
Chopper production tailed off as kids gravitated to BMXs, ending production in the early 1980s
after selling over 1.5M bikes.
And that would be about it for the Chopper, except for the nostalgia of adults wanting
to relive their youth now they had much more disposable income!
This led to the revival of the Chopper in 2004 with the new lighter aluminium mk3 version.
In the interests of modern safety laws, the bike’s seat was revised, and the gear control
moved to the handlebars.
But it just wasn’t the bike adults remembered from their youth.
They couldn’t fit on it, and their kids wouldn’t have thanked them for buying them one.
Sales were slow, finally ending in 2018.
Chopper nostalgia remains high, and possibly the most audacious use it’s been put to
is by Matt Richardson who raised almost £3,000 for a cancer charity by riding it up the famed
Mount Ventoux – one of the major killer mountains regularly used for the Tour de France.
He must have really annoyed these cyclists on their “proper” bikes as he passed them!
The Chopper was an icon for a generation of kids that grew up putting playing cards in
their wheels to pretend their Chopper was a motorbike.
But I’m sorry, the Grifter was better!
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