Big Wheel

Get down low, start pedaling and spin it around! The Big Wheel turned the driveway into a racetrack.

One huge plastic wheel in front, two little wheels in back, and a seat only a few inches off the ground. Climb on, start pedaling, and suddenly the driveway is a racetrack.

The Big Wheel was a fixture of driveways and sidewalks in the 1970s. It sat much, much lower than a bicycle or regular tricycle, so riding one felt completely different. You weren't sitting up over the wheels. You were almost sitting on the pavement.

And then there was the trademark spinout. Get moving, crank the handlebars hard to one side, and slide the back end around. Do that often enough on concrete and those plastic wheels eventually developed their own worn, rough, rattling sound.

That was part of the appeal. Big Wheel was made for racing down the driveway, skidding around, and generally being ridden harder than anybody would treat a regular bicycle.

Big Wheel bikes were very popular around my neighborhood in the 1970s. I was a little old for one, but the younger kids loved them - they would often travel in packs of three or four kids, and you could hear the rumble of them coming from a long ways away.

Big Wheel has disappeared and returned under different manufacturers over the years, but the traditional shape and bright color scheme (yellow handlebars and fork, red body, and blue seat back) is hard to mistake. And they seem to be making a resurgence in popularity. I’ve recently started to see them more and more often.

One enormous front wheel, two little back wheels, and a kid sitting low enough to make an ordinary driveway feel a lot faster than it really was.