Star Wars on the Streets: A Speeder Bike Chase

With the upcoming release of ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’, let’s take a look at this awesome mashup of motorcycles and Star Wars that happened last year on the busy streets of New York, Manhattan.

 

Talk about a Halloween celebration.

(Image screenshot from Youtube)

 

If you’re a fan of the awesome franchise, you may be familiar with the speeder bike. If not, the speeder bike is actually a common sight in the fictional world, and are also known as ‘jumpspeeders’. According to the Star Wars wikia, they are “open-air repulsorlift vehicles that emphasizes speed and maneuverability over stability.”

(Image taken from Otaku House)

 

But enough of this geek talk. Let’s take a look at how this brilliant group of people from the Big Apple brought the big screen to life.

A group of engineers, designers, bike builders and all-round pranksters assembled to build a pair of screen accurate Aratech 74-Z military speeder bikes. Starting with the Super 73 electric bikes from Lithium Cycles as the base, the group then used a combination of plywood, cardboard, expanding foam and Bondo putty to build the speeder bike shells.

The Super 73 itself is a motorcycle with a 1000-watt hub-mounted motor, approximately 56 km of range and a top speed of about 40 km per hour. It’s not the best or powerful, but evidently it does the trick.

(Image taken from Lithium Cycles)

 

Other details including PVC pipes, NERF footballs, gadgets and gizmos aplenty, and an assortment of thingamabobs. To finish off the illusion that the vehicle is gliding along by repulsorlift, the group hung some plastic mirrors from the bottom of the shell to hide the motorbike’s wheels.

Check out this video to see how the speeder bikes were crafted:

 

Of course, what’s the point of building such an elaborate bike straight out of the movies if you can’t share it with your fellow geeks around the world?

 

Hopping onto their speeder bikes, a pair of Rebel Alliance insurgents led elements of the Imperial Navy’s Stormtrooper Corps on a speeder bike chase across Manhattan, much to the delight of onlookers. The video has since garnered almost 5 million views.

 

The force is strong with this one.