I’m always watching for tipping points; those moments when the tide turns and previously resistant adopters of cycling start to embrace pedal power.
I looked over and saw my co-worker, Molly, looking at the image below.
I called dibs.
The photo was sent to us via the submission form on Bike Trailer Blog, a little sleeper of a blog that’s part of our blogging empire.
I said, “Molly, what you are looking at is the world’s best selling car.” I was drawing on a vague memory that the Cosy Coupe has outsold all other cars for more than 20 years.
I looked it up. Yes: Little Tikes
The Little Tikes factory in Hudson, Ohio, runs 24 hours a day, cranking out a Cozy Coupe [sic] every minute. Sales have remained strong, moving more than 450,000 of these cute plastic cars every year in the U.S. That’s more than the runners-up in the sales race: the Toyota Camry or Honda Accord.
If the world’s top selling car can be converted for use with a bike, why not them all?
The man in the picture is Andrew, and he said this about his bike child trailer conversion:
This timber trailer was designed to carry a Cosy Coupe children’s car. The timber is taken from old pallets, it is very strong and can easily hold my own weight, around 12 stone [168 lbs.].
Concerns about safety, engineering, and termites aside, I’m encouraged any time I see that a child is being psychologically imprinted with human-powered forms of transportation as opposed to automobiles. (See “Countering Cuddly Car Characters“)
When a kid grows up seeing his or her parents using a bike for transportation — even if it is from the inside of a plastic toy car — that kid has a better-than-average chance of not being assimilated into the broader car-compulsory culture.
However, I am a little worried about the tipping point of that DIY trailer.