More sad news, I never had my own but crashed my mates loads of times!

Genius design
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2147366/Designer-Raleigh-Chopper-bike-drew-envelope-dies-aged-85.html

Genius design

Are you on drugs??? If by Genius design you mean shonky bad handling deathtrap’ then I agree…
If you don’t, then stop taking the drugs…I had one in the early seventys.. It was utter shit!!!….

..I had one in the early seventys.. It was utter shit!!!….

That was simply beautiful, such heartfelt sentiment.

I do hope you will be delivering the Eulogy.

Great design looking at it from the perspective of a 10 year old kid obviously, it was the most exiting bike related thing at the time as far as i remember

As a efficient design made for winning the tour or hitting that 10′ gap jump then maybe not

Its all relative innit!

Form trounces function.

Great toy, bad bike!

I do hope you will be delivering the Eulogy.

I just did… 🙄 utter utter shit…..
Imagine you’re eight years old..all your mates have bikes and go on bike rides here there n everywhere, then on your ninth birthday you get a NEW bike!! WOO and indeed HOO!!….BUT… It’s a chopper..it handles badly, steers like it’s on crack, any ride longer than half a mile chasing a normal bike will cripple you, if you dare to take it offroad (like everyone else did with their bikes) you will die, and if you crash the gear lever will rip your knackers off and the chopper bars will smash your teeth out..
Imagine how disappointed you’d feel?? That’s how disappointed I felt…shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit!!!!!!!! 😥

Yep – Grifter was the sensible choice (well not strictly true – Diamond Back bmx was)

I always wanted a grifter… 😥

Khani,

Nothing wrong with the bike at all. Someone just bought you the wrong bike for what you wanted to do that’s all

My BMX is absolutely shocking for a week of Downhill in Morzine.
Not that great for touring round Europe camping either.

Does that mean BMX design is “utter shit”

Or did I just use the wrong bike for my holiday last summer ?

Nothing wrong with the bike at all

no..nothing..as long as you don’t try to keep up with another bike that’s not a chopper for more than 100yrds, so yes it’s Utter shit in that regard….
Taking a bmx to the alps is a fair comparison to a bunch of kids playing out on bikes at home is it? A bmx is good on a bmx track, a chopper was good in a shop window..it was shit everywhere else…
But let’s not let nostalgia get in the way eh’ 😐

If you hated the chopper so much this must have had you apoplectic!

The grifter was great. I’m still distressed that my parents gave it away

😥 you’re so mean….
I remember riding down the street and my mate thought it would be good to push me along using the sissy bar on the saddle, it went well…right til the point the front wheel hit a pothole, stopped dead and my mates face hit the sissy bar and knocked four of his front teeth clean out.. There was LOTS of blood and tears…

I went over the bars after hitting a curb on a chopper too, it was character forming as i am still falling off bikes 40 years later! 😀

khani – I think you should sue the designers family for emotional damages – it’s clear that this bike ruined your childhood and perhaps your entire life.

Personally, I never had a chopper but always wanted one. A couple of my mates had them and I was extremely jealous, especially of the (IIRC) slightly older ones where the handlebars weren’t fixed with a massive forward lean. Being able to tilt the bars back and ride proper easy rider stylee was very cool where we lived.

I can’t remember one of my chopper owning mates complaining that it wasn’t suitable for riding to/through the woods, down to the beach, where ever. We were kids, we didn’t know or care that there was some nirvana-esque geometry or component that we should be aspiring to.

The excitement off getting one of the first ever Choppers was mental.

It was a bazzilion miles from anything about at the time, for a kid it was like something from another planet. Just think there wasn’t any form of ‘fun’ bike back then – race bike or sit-up-and-beg, no BMX or MTB nothing.

Nah, 70’s my parents wouldn’t buy me a chopper so I got a Raleigh racing bike with sturmey archer 3 speed, I remember having a paddy cos I wanted 5 speed proper gears within 6 months knobbly tyres, a respray and cow horns later it was my off road bike of choice, then came the grifter back wheel and tiny front crank for a wheely monster measured in white lines, jumpers for goalposts eh?
Oh and I got a Viking touring bike a year later for tours of Derbyshire with Sid Standard

I’ve not thought about it, but was this the bike that sent cycling off at a tangent?
The first bike to introduce motorcycle ideas and design?
Did it send us on a path to BMX and then onto MTB.
Just pondering.

Nah BMX would have come along anyway from across the pond

Did it send us on a path to BMX and then onto MTB.
Just pondering.

no.. the bloodline is far less extraordinary

The Chopper was available in the USA in the late 60’s before it was available here.

So the fact BMX “would have come along anyway from a cross the pond” doesnt mean the chopper wasn’t a starting point.

Edit- although the Schwinn Stingray (very similar style) was more widely used.