Huffman Death Bike

[charnleybob]

Background on Death Bike

This is an old thread but I can add something to the background of the Death Bike.

My grandfather was Horace McKee Huffman, Jr. "Huffy" and he told me a little about the "Death Bike" debacle, though he never referred to it by that term (so far as I can tell it was invented within the hobby).

I was in high school or maybe college in the late 1980's and he was talking about the company. He was making the point that although it became a huge success, for the first two or three decades it was hanging on "by its fingernails." He mentioned and that there was a major recall that almost killed the company. The anxiety was still fresh on his face fifty years later and with a set jaw said with grim determination "I think we got them all back."

He didn't tell me precisely what the design problem was, he just said there was one and that it was dangerous. I can't remember him saying that anyone was killed, but the event still affected him some degree and maybe didn't want to talk about that part of it.

Another reason it could be called the "Death Bike" is that apparently it almost killed the company. At the time Huffman had an exclusive contract to build bikes for Firestone. After the recall Firestone decided it would be prudent to "diversify" its suppliers and gave part of the contract to another company (I don't know which one though one of you no doubt does).

It was a dark and rainy Saturday night, the evening before an Ann Arbor meet. (1989)
Tim Gedders, Patric Cafaro, Phil Scott ( still miss you brother ) and I were at the old Motel 6 in Ann Arbor.
We were all punchy bike show tired and were talking about the '38 Dayton Twin Flex model that nobody had seen, and little literature of it had been found.
The little bit of info we had and putting it all together, alluded to the fact that the recall had hurt the company bad and that Firestone freaked out and got rid of the exclusive contract with Huffman.
If you check the '38 and '39 Firestone catalogs you can see the switch over to other companies being used.
Due to the intense competiveness of the market at that time and that Huffman was still small, this almost killed the company.
Thus, we were joking around and came up with the term " Death bike!" about this model.
What is lost in this whole story, is the intense 4 month advertising of the new exciting Twin Flex (Death bike) in American bicyclist, Jan-April, 1939.
Suddenly, without explanation, in May, 1938, there are new ads about all new "1939" Dayton Twin Flex, the model most produced and the one we all have seen.
That Huffman was able to switch so fast and start producing this new design is amazing.
I met Horace Huffman ( a true gentleman!) some few years later at the Carrillon Museum in Dayton, 1992.
I asked him how many Twin Flexes were made?
He got this horrible ghastly look on this face and answered "those things were no dam good!"
I said no, the ones that were made later.
He replied 4-5000.
After all those years, though, the "Death bike" was still a bad memory for him.