How Late Did They Build Boys Muscle Bikes?

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kleinbike

kleinbike

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I was at a local flea market this morning and spotted a Murray built Free Spirit 20" boys muscle bike. This thing seemed to be very late manufacture, plastic pedals,etc. Had a very late '80's Toys 'R' Us feel about it. It had sat outside for quite some time and was pretty rough but complete. When did the last 20" boys muscle bikes roll off the line? I'm not talking about the reissue, black friday Krates and the other throwback stuff.

No, I didn't bring it home. Seller was suffering from "those Stingrays are really rare and sell for over $1,000 on Ebay" delusions.
 
I agree the golden age of the muscle bike parallels that of the muscle car, but just like the cars, the manufacturers tried to keep the genre alive. But how late? Detroit was still cranking out neutered, underpowered "muscle" cars long after the era had passed. Chevy never stopped making the Z28. Ford had the Mustang II Cobra, AMC even had the Gremlin "X." Even in the '80's, remember the Chevy Citation X11 and IROC Camaro? And in comparing muscle bikes to muscle cars, would that make BMX bikes like the Japanese compacts of the bike world?
 
Not sure I agree on the muscle bikes died when stick shifts died - I actually bought a collection from a guy a few years back and he said " don't really have any Muscle Bikes, all single speeds " ... if you look at bikes posted online, here and elsewhere, MANY if not a majority are single speeds.
I'm a little twisted, I guess ... my entire family is/was Chevy Nova fanatics, my brother only likes 73-74 (crossover years) and I best like the 75-79 ( big bumper,pseudo muscle cars ).. funny how many younger,and some older,persons call a 77 Nova a ' Muscle Car' (with a 305 automatic,lol).
To me, even later stuff is Muscle bike.. I can interchange 'Hi Rise' and Muscle Bike... and definitely consider multi speed post-stickshift bikes muscular,like thumb shift Stingrays,my stem-shifted Sears Spyder,etc.
more wierdness.. I also like the 'diamond-style' muscle bikes, which parallel the Nova years I like, hmmm... just my not-the-majority 2 cents, lol.
 
'75 to '79 Novas, Disco Novas I heard someone call them. I really like all the '70's Novas and their GM siblings...

N is for Nova-Chevy
O is for Omega-Oldsmobile
V is for Ventura-Pontiac
A is for Apollo-Buick
 
kleinbike said:
'75 to '79 Novas, Disco Novas I heard someone call them. I really like all the '70's Novas and their GM siblings...

N is for Nova-Chevy
O is for Omega-Oldsmobile
V is for Ventura-Pontiac
A is for Apollo-Buick
Click to expand...

Yep, Disco Novas works for me, have used that term :) ...

and you forgot the S on N O V A S .. Nova Omega Ventura Apollo Seville ( or could be Skylark for Buick ) .


need to reshoot some pics with the bikes in the scene ( and less snow )
 
Well, I was created in '72. And I can tell you as a kid I never owned a muscle bike. I had various forms of BMX bikes. I remember an early one I owned had a loaf seat, and my favorite which I don't remember much about... a Ross maybe? was a true BMX. So we're talking late '70s. I'd say look at the Schwinn Stingray to mark your timeline. In '74 the stick shift died. Schwinn still made the Stingray with a thumb shifter. Sears made the 20" 5-speed Spyder with a thumb shifter as well. But what year was the Stingray no longer offered? I know there were Bicentennial stingrays. So that's '76. But I also know there were a number of MX bikes that year.

It's a tough call because the market changed to meet the demand of kids. Kids didn't want heavy slow muscle bikes. Kids wanted fast, light and strong BMX. That movement started around '73/'74 I think. It took the market a couple years to catch the trend.
 
They were still plugging away with the Fair Lady too. But it's cool to see the emergence of the mountain bikes. That King Sting was pretty cool looking, albeit almost useless off-road because of its weight. Still, a neat piece of history.
 
I was also built in '72, and my first bike was a muscle bike. Around '79 or so, it was replaced with a Panda BMX, which by the time it got stolen around '83ish, the only thing original on the bike was the frame. I came across a kid in the next neighborhood over about a year later riding it. Most of the parts had been swapped for junk, but was no question my old bike. I asked the kid where he got it. Said his dad bought it at a garage sale. I kept my mouth shut about it being stolen as I was more than happy with it's replacement, a Redline MXII. During this time I remember a fair amount of muscle bikes still running around, many that had been built into BMX bikes or they could have been Schwinn BXs or early Scramblers. All the girls rode Fairladys (Fairladies?) or similar. Even into junior high some girls still rode theirs to school.
 
The loaf seat bikes, I remember seeing them in pictures, maybe a Sears or JC Penny's Christmas catalog? I can't ever remember seeing one on the street. I remember very clearly the first lowrider bike I saw. Around '80-'81 a couple Mexican kids we'd never seen before showed up and one was on a fully tricked out lowrider. Twisted sissybar, little chain steering wheel in between the twisted handlebars, and chromed everything. Us little white kids had never seen such a bike and were blown away. We thought it was awesome. he told us his uncle had built it for him. I was jealous. All my uncle ever did for me was ask me in the middle of a big family Christmas dinner if I had gotten laid yet.
 
The Muscle Bike Era has never ended, it has occasionally gone into periods of silent dormancy and hideous transformations (loaf seat), but has continued into the present – BFK’s and the Al Fritz of the recent past are a testament to that.

I was a kid during the height of the Muscle Bike Era of the 60’s and have never forgotten it; just like one’s first true love, time becomes irrelevant as it evolves into a state of memorized continuums.

- Hatched in 1954 -
 

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