LOST IN THE SUPERMARKET
IGNITION
WANDERING EYE
THE STORY OF MOTORCYCLES BIG RETAIL STORES
PAUL D’ORLÉANS
Like birds, whales, and my fellow gringos, I fly south for a dose of vitamin D in winter, down to San Jose del Cabo, the geological tip of California and the finish line of Baja desert racing. I’m not usually a big-box shopper, but stocking up for a week’s worth of supplies means hitting Mega, the retail chain that sells everything, including motorcycles. Unless you’ve been south of the border, you’ve likely never heard of an Italika; they’re “hecho en Mexico” and the largest producer, with about 400,000 units sold last year.
Italika originally used Korean engines but now makes its own; its cruisers, sportbikes, scooters, dirt bikes, and quads mostly employ the same 15OCC four-stroke single, but its ADV bike and “chopper” use 250s—woo! They’re cheap—around a grand for any variety and double that for the big ones. They’re parked right by the checkout line at Mega, eclipsing candy bars for my impulse-purchase attention.
We Nortenos also have a history of motorcycles for sale in big retail stores. Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck were the Amazon.com of their day, with doorstop catalogs selling everything from perfume to a prefab house, all delivered to your door. Sears got the motor ball rolling in 1911 with the Sears Auto-Cycle, in striking red/white livery and nickelplated Spacke engine, a i,ooocc V-twin F-head. It cost $169. Sears dropped motorbikes in 1916 but returned to form in 1951 with the Cruisaire, a re-badged Vespa scooter, for $279.95. Sears sold thousands, partly due to excellent timing, as Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn starred in the 1952 film Roman Holiday, with a Vespa as Best Supporting Actor.
Sears soon expanded with a line of bikes branded Allstate, starting with a Cushman step-through in 1952 then Puchs and Gileras into the 1960s. In 1967, they were all re-badged Sears after a 50year hiatus, but by ’69 Sears was done with motorcycles. It had a brief fling in 1977 selling mopeds during the “Great Moped Craze” (when I bought mine), selling Free Spirits (Puch), to compete with JCPenney’s Swinger (Puch), and Montgomery Ward’s Riverside mopeds (Columbia/AMF/Minarelli). All of them quit motorbikes by the 1980s.
Montgomery Ward was the original catalog merchandiser, founded in 1872, but it took until 1955 to sell bikes, carrying Riverside-branded Motobecane mopeds. These were followed with Riverside Lambrettas and Bianchis, but by 1965 it had switched almost exclusively to Benellis. The Italian motorcycle industry was expert in making inexpensive, reliable, high-performance small bikes. With a strong dollar/weak lire postwar, Italy was the perfect supplier to America’s hunger for small bikes. Monkey Ward jazzed up its Benelli singles with names like Wildcat, Fireball, and Cobra. I remember being dazzled by the metalflake and chromium sparkle of the Wildcat Scrambler at age six, while my older brothers went totally crazy, begging my long-suffering father— a single dad—to buy one. We never did.
My brothers got their first bikes (used) when they got jobs. Don ring-dinged around Stockton on a Suzuki Titan before abandoning two wheels in favor of a Porsche-powered Beetle. Dave raced DKW dirt bikes with funny Earles forks until he discovered that playing a guitar brought dramatically fewer injuries and a lot more girls. In '78 I found a used Honda Express to ferry me to night classes so I could escape high school a year early; the bike bug bit hard and never left. I didn’t buy a chain-store motorcycle, but tempting kids at the grocery store with cheap and cheerful bikes makes so much sense. It works on adults too.
BY THE NUMBERS
$999 A NEW ITALIKA TRABAJO DT150 CLASICA
$369.95 1967 PRICE FOR A WARD'S RIVERSIDE 125
37,000 MONTGOMERY WARD EMPLOYEES LAID OFF IN 2000
