IRBIT, Russia - this is the story of how a dying Soviet-era met industry and an aging population of bikers in the United States and happiness together on the streets and highways of America found.
Think of it as easy rider, the golden years.
It began as a matter of survival for the Irbit the signature Ural had motor works, font kitchen for decades with side-car plant motorcycle, but who discovered that the business in the post-Communist sunset like so many other Soviet company sputtering was.
Irbit found salvation in a unlikely niche: older American riders, the utility, not thrill or damage by liquids. Suddenly had the side-car, a World War II newsreel, a new life under the late Middle-aged evoke a seemingly anachronistic product.
The company moved its sales strategy overseas in the 1990s and today, despite its deep roots in Russia as the purveyor to the Court of the Red Army, it transmits 60 per cent of its production in the United States.
On the target male consumers is the ideal of born to run by a motorcycle Mama on the back of a spouse or girlfriend riding next to the dog or the food given way.
Irbit and its dealers say their is older bikers core market, but combination has also started the bike fitted with a younger generation of riders, couples pick up that his find appealing.
"In the Soviet Union, the bike was a workhorse," said Vladimir N. Kurmachev, Irbit's factory Director. "Now it's an expensive toy."
David Reich, 65, a retired Carpenter in Salem, Oregon/United States, bought a white Ural patrol from a car dealership there last year.
"It is something that my wife and I both enjoy", he said in a telephone interview. You than buying two bikes, he said, but his wife Jeanne, chose the sidecar to would get no motorcycle license. Also, she could chat while touring.
"I have a ball!" Jeanne Reich wrote in an E-mail. "I enjoy cruising along a few inches from the road with nothing to do but take in the view."
Peter TerHorst, the spokesman for the American motorcycle Association, said the average age of the 230,000 members of 48. When people strength and coordination to disappear, he said, "You see how they transition to the sidecar."
"Elder couples say, that it is simply not convenient to double," Mr. Kurmachev said during a tour of the workshop, where vehicles drawn by them are polished, painted and standard installed on almost any bike.
Irbit, known by its Russian acronym IMZ, says that it is the only motorcycle manufacturer in the world has to sell trailers in the volume. some BMW and Harley-Davidson dealers have them as options, sold, although Harley sidecar production is set.
Transport units, said while the motorcycle market in the United States, Ty van Hooydonk, popular still account for a fraction with some drivers, a spokesman for the motorcycle industry Council, a trade group. He said the makers of sales does not open.
Irbit's factory is located on the edge of a dilapidated city of wooden buildings and rutted dirt roads on the Siberian side of the Ural mountains, with a statue of Lenin still on the main square. It works, but on the strong diminished capacity years, when it produced up to 130,000 vehicles a year compared with its heyday of the 1970s. Assembly lines have closed and the bikes are now built by hand.
A ride in a sidecar can either exciting or terrifying for them not accustomed, feel. Set low to the ground, tends the sidecar rise into the air to right round. The bike is street legal in all 50 States. But because the entire three-wheeled contraption legally is a motorcycle, no seat belt is provided or required. With United States sales rising, Irbit says that the air bag for the sidecar studied it.
The Urals is a motorcycle of heavy, 40 PS whose two cylinders side protrude from the frame. It is modeled after an end of the 1930s years BMW sidecar bike R71, Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union provided called, after the countries signed a non-aggression pact in 1939. When the Nazis broke this Pact and the Russians used the bicycle to combat them.
Irbit stopped military models 1955 build and began focusing on a civilian market of Hunter, outdoor enthusiasts and owners of holiday homes.
With the end of the command economy, subsidized steel and cheap labour, the factory was forced to increase its prices, and sales in Russia fell sharply. Older vehicles drawn by them in Russia with hay, to see head of lettuce and planks of wood. Irbit sold only 20 motorcycles in Russia last year, and the owners say that the factory without sales in the United States would be dead.
Before the recent recession of Irbit 650 sold Ural per year in the United States, and says that it on the way to that level this year again, reaching 48 dealers around the country. A low end Ural sidecar sold combo for about $10,000. Over all, the factory plans for the construction of 1,100 units in 2011.
The popularity of sidecar in America has been fueled by motorcycle enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest, where bicycles were imported in small numbers first in 1993.
Bikers were fascinated from the Ural retro-design, and some got a kick out of the mount machine gun on the model exported to America - a feature that had long since disappeared from the Soviet civil machines.
"Our customers had to fake machine guns," said Jim Petitti, the owner of Raceway services in Salem, Oregon/United States, a Ural dealer by phone. "It faded kind of because the police they were such hassle."
Sale of Urals picked up as traders appeal to older couples not more happy riding on the same seat identifies the bicycle.
"Together for years, was riding husbands and wives have", said Mr. Petitti, characterize typical Ural clients. "Finally the old solo bike is too heavy to keep up to." The woman wants to ride behind the husband. You can not see. "Available with their own cockpit, and it the adventure is ready, again."
Irbit says that while older bikers it carried through a difficult spell, younger American couples also drawn.
"they are good looking bikes," Elena Gonzalez said, 24, a nurse, in a telephone interview from Miami, where she lives with her new husband, John, a firefighter. The couple ride of their Ural mountains after their marriage.
"We wanted to get a soda, and then we thought, 'you let just go us on the bike, it is fun,'," said Mrs Gonzalez.
Norman Mayer son contributed reporting.
This story, "retro import Russia attracts older, easy riders," originally in the New York Times appeared.
Copyright © 2011 New York Times
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