Popular Vintage Bicycles: 1970s

Video Transcript

"So the 1960's, and into the mid 1970's, we had the muscle bikes, or the stingray bikes, but another style bike that we've had, actually since the 30's, but was extremely popular here in the U.S. in the 1960's and 1970's, is the standard English three-speed. I talked a little bit about this bike before. It's got a good upright riding position. These are called North Road Handlebars, so your posture is up, and you can look around. It has hand brakes. It's got the classic 3-speed thumb shifter. You can actually shift gears on this while you're stopped, so in the 1970’s, when we had an oil crisis, kind of like we're having now, gas prices went up really high, and everybody moved to bicycles. A lot of people moved to ten-speed bikes with the racing handlebars, but bikes like this were the most practical, and still are the most practical bikes around. I think by the mid1970’s, Raleigh and other companies, were mass producing these in huge quantities, and they had fenders. They had comfortable seats, and they were extremely popular."