Comfort Bikes & Cruisers

Cruiser bicycles are balloon-tired bikes with heavy duty frames and were America’s standard bike from the early 1930s right through the 1950s. more...

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Their wide tires and simple mechanicals (usually single speed with coaster brake) are ideally suited to riding on flat sandy beaches, which means that they remained popular through the 1960s and 1970s as “Beach Cruisers.” In the late 70s/early 80s, durable old cruiser frames formed the basis of the newly-developing mountain bike. Cruisers’ comfort, style, and affordability (compared to mountain and racing bikes) have led to renewed popularity in recent years.

Early development

The original cruiser bicycle was the B-10E Motorbike (which, despite its name, had no motor at all—but did look like a motorcycle), introduced by Schwinn in 1933. The bicycle business was in a terrible slump, due to the Depression, widespread price discounting, and the generally delicate, cheap construction of bikes at the time. Frank W. Schwinn wanted to build a sturdier bike and adapted several features from the Henderson and Excelsior motorcycles his company had built during the 1920s. He gave his new bike design a heavy “cantilevered” frame with two top tubes and added 2.125 inch wide “balloon” tires from Germany. The resulting bicycle was tough enough for kids to ride anywhere, banging over curbs, bumps, and potholes without suffering the flat tires and taco wheels of earlier bike designs. Within two years, every major bike manufacturer in the USA had brought out their own balloon tire bikes.

In 1934, Schwinn upped the ante by introducing the Aero Cycle. This bike didn’t feature any technical improvements over the original cruiser design, but it had much more style and appeal to young riders. Its streamlined look, decorative “tank,” and battery-powered headlight would help define the cruiser look. Cruisers still offer these features today.

1950s heyday

Although cruisers were popular throughout the 1930s and 40s, their greatest success definitely came during the postwar Baby Boom. Schwinn sold one out of four bikes bought in 1950.

Schwinn, however, had plenty of competition from firms like Roadmaster, Columbia, Shelby, Monark, and Huffy. Manufacturers vied to come up with new gimmicks and styling features to attract buyers to their balloon tired cruisers. Young riders were wooed with a Donald Duck bike that had a quacking horn or “cowboy” bikes featuring the names of Gene Autry or Hopalong Cassidy, along with fringed saddlebags and capgun holsters. Slightly older riders were tempted by springer fork suspension, motorcycle-style horn tanks, chrome plating everywhere, and such exotic offerings as the Huffy Radiobike, which featured a giant AM radio in its tank.

Read more at Wikipedia.org