Cars You Don't See Anymore

Hand brakes? Ahh...….you had the Gen-2 Big Wheel!

 

Keep that big wheel toinin

 

The original Big Wheels had a hand brake also. It was plastic, but it definitely was there, as Kenny Thibault's had one.

 

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds you at first didn't clarify what "I borrowed."

My dad and me on our big wheels.

 

Yeah, the one I rode had a plastic handbrake. It belonged to my best friend Hugh. We were both into Knight Rider. I had a Knight Rider pedal car (which I kept for years after I was too big to ride, but ultimately it disappeared.) and Hugh had a Knight Rider big wheel. We'd get together at his house and set up obstacle courses to ride around. That's where I learned how fun it could be to slide around a corner.

 

I never did like that rich kid Kenny! I remember the day that Thibault family moved away.

 

One of the sons of our "Tri-County Cruisers' club had an exact replica of the Knight Rider car. He spent a fortune of his grocery store stock boy money on it.
He was the same kid who's dad bought my '55 Chevy wagon and had the BW 4-speed replaced with a Powerglide that wasn't even hooked up right!

 

Here's what his Big Wheel looked like, complete with the hand brake:


Here's what my pedal car looked like:

 

I remember the knight rider ones. The Dorris family in a nearby neighborhood had a bunch of kids and a bunch of big wheels. They had a big house, with a big hill, down which we rode the big wheel. We would play “highjacker”. Same game we played on sleds in the snow but on big wheels in the driveway. About 7-8 of us start out at the top of the hill. The point was to try and “highjack” someone else’s ride before you got to the bottom of the hill. Winners arrived at the end on a different big wheel than they started, losers were left road rashed and scattered in the drive. Anyone who showed up in shorts was an immediate target. Ahh, to be a kid again where mildly assaulting your neighbor is considered a sport

 

Oh, I see..."Torque the Dork" on a downhill slope.

 

They evidently have watched too many Ben Hur movie re-runs. Good thing they grew out of it, before they had a chance to add sportive devices to their wheels

 

So right Grizz. I remember when there was nothing like a good dodge ball game.

 

Here in some of our nicer Illinois cities it's now called 'dodge bullets'.

 

------- It seems odd now, but back when us kids got our first cars we'd play 'tag bumper' or 'bumper tag' using our real car bumpers.
That's when my 1949 Dodge had real bumpers............... Mine was deep maroon and old people were not allowed in it.