Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

Ride One and You Will Buy One

 

A Whizzer -  I recall seeing  them  advertised in Popular Mechanics  and Boy’s  magazine and maybe  one or two  actually on the street, but that was more than fifty years ago. Most of the ads I saw would show a teenage boy cruising along on a bike with Whizzer motor attached. But there was one that featured  a young teenage girl in shorts enjoying a ride on a Schwinn bike equipped with a Whizzer. It stuck in my head – and apparently stayed there.  The  caption read : “Ride One and You’ll buy one.“

Now, someone  - a customer – a man about my age, is riding what looks to be a Whizzer into the parking lot where I work. More about him later, but let us talk about the magazine ad.

Why was there a girl in the Whizzer ad? Could it be a way to attract the attention of teenaged boys ladened with sex hormones who might hopefully  buy a Whizzer one day? Maybe, but then again, perhaps it was just a harbinger of a slowly evolving cultural change.

To attract women as consumers, advertisers in the 1950s started to depict women in their ads enjoying a newfound sense of independence. They would highlight women happily engaging in tasks traditionally associated with men, like fixing a leaky faucet or changing a car tire.

Okay, riding a Whizzer doesn’t equate to changing a flat, you are going to need air in that balloon tire and there was some maintenance required when you rode a Whizzer. The Girl Scouts  of  America already had  an  “Automobile  Badge.” To earn one, girls had to demonstrate  their driving skills,   pass a first aid training class, and show they had a reasonable amount of knowledge of auto mechanics as well. Many major automobile manufacturers had already recognized the growing trend of women driving for fun and necessity. They began to gear more of their print ad campaigns towards women. This ad may have been a ”baby step.”

About 1500 Whizzer motors were  made before the original manufacturer sold its rights to the motor to an investor. When WW II came along the investor successfully petitioned government to allow production as a wartime measure, since the Whizzer allowed defense workers to commute without their automobiles. Postwar popularity then grew, in part from ads liked the ones mentioned earlier. The Whizzer engine could be attached to a sturdy bicycle frame, a Schwinn  or Columbia. The last one went out the door sometime in the early 1950s, 

This  Whizzer my customer owned was mounted on a 1952 Schwinn Admiral bicycle in red and white. There was  a headlight on the front fender, and the Whizzer fuel tank on the upper frame bar. The bike had white wall balloon tires. The rear fender had an open luggage carrier, and the leather-covered seat had twin coil springs. The bike was a little rough when my customer bought it, but he was able to have it restored. It looked great and he said it ran well too.

“What made buy this? I asked.

“It was the pretty girl in the shorts. You know, ride one and you will buy one. Well, one day  I rode one.”

 

God Bless America