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34 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com Vintage Feature Vintage Feature Chaparral Mini Cycles Chaparral Mini Cycles By Ted Guthrie By Ted Guthrie Believe it or not, there was a me when every other kid in America wanted a powered two-wheel- er consis ng of an engine sourced from a lawn mower, in a hard tail frame, with eight-inch wheels and li le or no brakes. Oh, yeah. We wanted 'em bad! Yep, those were the original "minibikes", and various manufacturers began turning them out in the tens of thousands with the things becoming available everywhere from the local hardware store to Sears and JCPenney's. And the li le beasts were gruesome. But we rode the crap out of them and yearned for more. What next? Well, the basic minibike formula advanced to include larger wheels, some rudimentary sus- pension pieces, and actual brakes. And yet, those li le machines were for the most part s ll ed to the basic pull-start Briggs & Stra on or Tecumseh four-stroke engine, linked to the rear wheel by a single-speed centrifugal clutch-drive system. This eventually led to the Japanese manufactur- er's pursuit of the burgeoning youth market by introducing mini-cycles such as Honda's Mini-Trail series and Yamaha's Mini Enduro, as early as 1968, followed by many more. At this very same me, however, small, independent U.S. manufacturers or importers were also releasing quite competent machines intended primarily for kids. One such company was Chaparral, based in Colo- rado. Originally, Powered Products Corpora on, lo- cated in Illinois, began as a snowmobile manufac- turer and created its first prototype in 1966. The company wanted its product to stand out from the compe on and, as such, ini ally worked with tes ng sleds using a fiberglass chassis. That design was later dropped in favor of a conven onal steel frame, but PPC did introduce and u lize the very first independent front suspension in a snowmo- bile. Their ini al models were introduced in 1967. Things began moving quickly for PPC, as sales of their snowmobiles took off. They moved their opera on to Grand Junc on, Colorado, and updat- ed the company name to Chaparral. By 1968, they had added a line of mini-cycles to their product offerings and later went on to offer bicycles and Bar-B-Q grills, as well as produce products for the U.S. Defense Department. With sales ever increas- ing, Chaparral wanted to expand beyond its own capacity and, in 1969, sold out to FTS/HITCO, a