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Specialized Green Machine development wallEurobike faves: Specialized Green Machine
Even though it's Cycle Show time now, we're still working through our back catalogue of stuff from Eurobike. Heck, we'll still be churning it out at Christmas.
This penny-farthing-cum-trike on the Specialized stand tickled us. Partly because it's a cool thing in its own right, and partly because the development wall behind had some amusing nuggets on. We can imagine that ranting one of these around the test track would be a lot of fun. Don't hold your breath if you want to use it in competition though, eh...
Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.
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The Green Machine was the badass competitor to the Big Wheel.
Both of which were rigid wheel, fixed gear contraptions aimed at kids whose parents were too lazy or just not bothered to teach them how to ride a bike.
Although the Big Wheel had a hand brake that was supposed to make it possible to "spin out", supposedly part of the allure of riding one (it was the 1970s), that rarely worked as the "drive"r was usually 4 or 5 years old and had zero upper body strength.
The Green Machine capitalized on this, making the spin out its USP thanks to the dual handled steering levers. But as I recall, they never got enough traction to build up enough speed to really spin out even with older/stronger users and the added leverage due to the light front end and hard plastic tires. So you either carted down hills (then faced a long, push back up) or tried to convince adult types to bend down low and push you off after sprinting like an olympic bobsleigh team member (which could be why these new models have a "kick plate" on the back axel?)
And if anyone has ever forgone riding a recumbent because they felt too vulnerable moving around in traffic at half the height of a "normal" cyclist; imagine how invisible kids on these things were? (The original toy definitely didn't come with a visibility flag mounted on a white fiberglass pole) Especially considering that most pavements, even in the best kept 'burbs, posed too many speed killing obstacles and riding in the street was de rigor for the committed Green Machinist.
'The Green Machine'...
...has been sold in Halfords since god knows when.