1/1/2024 0 Comments Chopper bicycle net![]() 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. We’ll have to wait and see whether the release of the new Raleigh Chopper will stimulate further success across the different sides of the business.The "sissy bar" behind the saddle is there too, although it’s a few inches lower than on the original bike. Kidger says the electric bike market isn’t growing at the rate Raleigh would like it to, but it’s still double the size it was in 2019, and Raleigh has seen “some real successes over the last five or six years in that market”.Īs an indicator of this success, the Financial Times reports Kidger estimates Raleigh’s share of the UK’s electric bike market to be around 5 per cent and that Raleigh made a pre-tax profit of £2.82m on sales of £74.5m in 2020. Recently, it released the Raleigh Modum, a folding e-cargo bike. It has been adapting to the cargo and electric bike market for a number of years, with ebikes becoming a core part of its business in 2018. The brand was bought in 2012 by the Accell Group, one of the biggest electric bike manufacturers and brand owners in Europe. Kidger says ebikes provide an opportunity for Raleigh to expand: “We’ve identified that as a real growth area for the business, and we’ve pivoted Raleigh into that emerging market,” says Kidger. Kidger hopes the Chopper will appeal to people’s hearts and minds. “Electric bikes are the single biggest benefit to a lot of the challenges the UK faces at the moment, in terms of congestion charges, and net zero and sustainability targets that have come in,” he says. 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”. Lee Kidger says Raleigh wants people to rediscover the “contagious joy of cycling”. ![]()
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