BikeParts Wiki
Register
Advertisement

The Raleigh Dirt Cross was a children's bicycle manufactured during the late 1990s by the Raleigh Bicycle Company of Nottingham, England.

Design and styling[]

The Dirt Cross was very unusual design and is best described as a hybrid of a BMX and a mountain bike. It was fitted with 20 inch wheels, and the styling of the handlebars and frame were similar to those of a BMX, with dimensions designed to accomodate 6 to 10 year olds. Every Dirt Cross was fitted with 5 speed Shimano gears and a twist-grip gear controller as standard. It is possible that the design was influenced by the Strika as both bikes were fitted with imitation front suspension forks[citation needed]. Although children's bikes with functional suspension forks were available from Raleigh during the late 1990s, those fitted to Dirt Cross were purely cosmetic.

Advertising[]

Television and poster advertisements for the Dirt Cross featured the Nottingham Forest striker Stuart Pearce [1]. The Dirt Cross was the first children's bike to be advertised by Raleigh using a multimedia application complete with MPEG video clips running on interactive public information kiosks.

Despite the rather high profile marketing campaign, sales of the Dirt Cross appear to be quite low[citation needed]. Production ceased in 1999 with no similar replacement model.

Go Kart[]

The Dirt Cross title was later used on a children's Go Kart from Raleigh which is still on sale in 2009.

References[]

Template:Refs

External links[]

  1. Raleigh Dirt Cross advertising poster and television commercial
Advertisement