From their seat posts to the handlebars, everything offers a comfortable ergonomic position. In mid-1968, Huffman released the Flaming Stack chain guard, which was designed to look like the distinctive side exhaust pipe covers on the Corvette sports car. Later that same year, Huffman released a new Slingshot model with 16″ front dragster wheel, and 20″ rear. The new 1969 models where the last year for the three-bar Rail frame style. In 1970, Huffman deleted their three-bar frame and went to a two-bar Rail frame, eventually adding additional two-tone fade paint jobs along with Persons striped seats. In 1966, Huffman introduced a new long-wheelbase bicycle frame called the Rail.
This contract increased sales to $2.8 million and on top of this, the US government also placed an order for an additional 4000 bicycles. In 1924, feeling confident, he set out to establish his own company called the Huffman Manufacturing Company. Horace Huffman Snr – founder of Huffy Bicycles – learnt the art of manufacturing at his father’s knees. His father was George P. Huffman, owner of the Davis Sewing Machine huffy cruiser bike Company (1882 – 1925), and the producer of the first Davis Sewing Machine bicycle and renowned Dayton Special Roadster. Schwinn, founded in Chicago in 1895, was the dominant bike-maker for much of the 20th century; by the 1950s, one in four bikes sold in the United States was a Schwinn. Last month Schwinn chief executive Jeff Sinclair said the company, which merged with GT Bicycles to become Schwinn/GT in 1998, had a short list of buyers and that the sale could be complete within the next month.
In Niles, The Walk and Roll event involved a miniature road map where children could pedal go karts and learn the rules of the road. At the event, Chief Luis Tigera raffled off items donated by local businesses and the bikes. In Niles, about 200 people got together in the parking lot of Notre Dame College Preparatory School and then took a bike ride led by the Niles Police Department.
Huffy, which makes bicycles and basketball backboards, has suffered in recent years because of competition from foreign manufacturers. In 1999, Huffy closed its last two U.S. bicycle-making plants and moved production to Asia and Mexico because of price competition from Chinese manufacturers. “What they’re buying is assets of the company and one of the prime assets of the company is the Schwinn brand,” Sinclair said in the statement Monday.
The company’s plan was to import bikes from Asia and Mexico to cover lost production. The Celina plant was making 1.6 million bikes annually. The wartime “civilian transport model” was a stripped-down version that consisted of little more than two wheels, a brake, fender, frame, seat, pedals, light-weight tires and no chain guard. Huffmans started out producing about 12 bicycles per day but as the Depression worsened and more people turned to cycling for their transportation needs that figure rose to nearly 200 a day. At first Horace manufactured products for service stations and steel bicycle rims, but sensing an opportunity during the Depression in 1934, he switched to making bicycles.