In turn, Raleigh’s electric bikes provide practical solutions to facilitate this move to more frequent cycling, and Kidger suggests they could help people take kids to school, replace a second car and help with wider issues. Kidger says this is where releasing heritage models joins up with the more modern side of Raleigh’s business: electric bikes.īy pulling on the hearts and minds of people in evoking the heritage of the brand through bikes such as the Chopper, Kidger hopes Raleigh will convince people to cycle more. Kidger says the Raleigh Chopper created a “movement” in the 1970s, with the bike encapsulating a sense of joy, freedom and fun.ĭesigning a new Chopper, which so closely resembles Choppers of old, is a way for Raleigh to help people rediscover what Kidger calls the “contagious joy of cycling”. The Chopper follows in the wake of other bike revivals by Raleigh, with a replica TI-Raleigh Team bike released in 2020 to mark the fortieth anniversary of its Tour de France win.Lee Kidger says Raleigh wants people to rediscover the “contagious joy of cycling”. It’s also offering a range of spares for the new bike, many of which it says are compatible with the original Mark 2 Chopper, so it might be time to dust it off if you still have one lurking in your shed awaiting a restoration project. Raleigh describes the new Chopper as a limited edition, so it remains to be seen how many it plans to manufacture or if the Chopper will take off with kids (and their parents who remember riding the original) and again becomes a blockbuster bicycle. That’s quite a jump from the £32 for which the Chopper originally sold. The recommended retail price for the new Chopper is £950. The new Raleigh Chopper frame comes in one size, 37cm and the bike is available in two colours, Infra Red and Ultra Violet, again reflecting two of the colour options of the original Mark 2 Chopper. Infra Red and Ultra Violet colour options replicate two or the original colours available for the Mark 2 Chopper (Image credit: Raleigh) Snow points out that despite its beefed-up frame and components, the modern bike's 18.4kg weight is similar to the original. For example, rather than braised joints, the new bike is welded, but to retain the authentic look the head tube has been CNC machined to a fine detail." "There have also been some concessions to modern manufacturing techniques but all key features from the original bikes, we have tried to keep with this new model. It then built a prototype in the UK and worked with Raleigh's Taiwan-based manufacturing partner to manufacture the frame and components.Īccording to Snow: "We had to change the height dimension of the saddle and sissy bar (saddle support) to meet modern safety standards and increase the gauge (thickness) of the frame and fork tubing to allow the bike to pass physical force testing. Of course, there’s no sight of disc brakes, with rim brakes responsible for stopping power.Īdam Snow, Head of Product Management at Raleigh, says that the company purchased a number of MK 2 Chopper frames, which, alongside the original hand-drawn technical drawings, were scanned for new CAD design templates for the new bike and to build up an accurate scale model - a necessity for modern-day manufacturing processes and techniques. As with that model, there’s the short rear rack to carry your frisbee or whatever and that funny mount in the headset to push your Ever Ready front light onto. The "sissy bar" behind the saddle is there too, although it’s a few inches lower than on the original bike.
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