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
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