"Hutch teamed up with downhill BMX racer Dan Hanebrink in the late eighties and decided to take a tangent from their legendary line of BMX trick bikes such as the Trick Star and Wind Styler. They developed three bikes which pushed bicycle aerodynamics and speed to a whole new level. The GPV (Gravity Powered Vehicle) was a super-stretched, pedal-free bike almost fully enveloped in fiberglass fairings. These downhill-race-only bikes were rumoured to approach 100MPH and were not made publicly available. Instead, the HPV was released in incredibly small quantities to mimic the speed of the GPV on a bit more user-friendly of a platform. The littlest brother, the FZ-1, was no more than a BMX bike with a shoddy fairing, and never went over well with buyers."
The HPV was an experiment of sorts, and besides its outlandish appearance, has a MASSIVE 63 or 64-tooth front sprocket running to a 6-speed rear cassette, which through word of mouth (and the internet nowadays) is said to make this bike blindingly fast! A stretched rear, wheel covers and (at the time) top quality brakes, shifter, and deraileur made this one-of-a-kind cycle likely scary to pilot downhill at well over 40-50mph.
"A 26inch wheeled "gravity bike" would have the right diameter wheels for speed but the center of gravity would be outta whack , unless you rode prone & steered from inside of the front diamond section of the frame & had pegs on the rear wheels."
2 comments:
There is a bike shop here in Chicago that has one of those on the ceiling (amoung many others). Crazy bike. I'll try and get some shots of it for ya.
Ok, weird.
The guy that developed the gravity bikes with Hanebrink was a guy named Andy Baines. My shop in North Hollywood was in front of his. SMart motherfucker and a killer machinist.
He had one of those gravity bikes, the ones they raced in his shop and he had a KR fairing for it, but in the chassis instead of cranks was a weedwacker motor somehow attached to a rear hub with 6 speeds and normal deraileurs!
On the street my shop was on you could never go far enough to go any faster than about 40 with that motor as it has super tall gearing. but the one time we took it out on vanowen one night i got clocked at 61 mph on this gravity bike fitted with a weedwhacker motor!!!! RAD!!! Man it was sketchy at that speed too.
rad that thing fuckin ruled!!!!
but andy's dog would try and kill everybody...
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