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Moody Cycle Sales
It all started in a
field somewhere in Indiana in 1909, a boy and a dream. The Boy, Elmer
Corn, the dream, to rule the world on a machine with a freedom never
felt before. Yet Elmer was killed two months later in a farming accident
while riding his bicycle in a corn field that was being harvested by his
father in a steam powered picking machine. That dream didn’t die though.
His younger brother Floyd knew that he would some day bring his siblings
visions to life. But with Floyd only being 14 months old, the dream
would have to wait.
Ten years later, Floyd had started tinkering with his father’s farm
machinery. He knew that one day he could turn these farm (work) machines
into devices of leisure. The first improvement was a tether made from
bailing twine pulling a small trough with a seat in it that was tested
on the ox rig used to disc fresh plowed fields. This idea was short
lived. Not from the ox patty splatters but from the tragic loss of
Floyd’s left foot after the first 180 degree turn.
By 1925 Floyd was a strapping young man and had invented many things to
enhance the lifestyles of like minded people. He had also invented a
fully articulated left foot to replace the one he lost in that tragic
first experiment. This marvel of engineering allowed him to drive autos,
ride bicycles and even run almost as a normal two footed person could.
Now if he could just fix that walking in circles thing! At 17 years old,
Floyd still had that original dream from his long gone brother, lodged
in his head. That dream led him to open up a store that sold modified
machinery that would insure a thrill. One example of Floyd’s early
leisure machines was a small single cylinder farm tractor with a thirty
two degree rake on the front end.
See Figure
1 click here.
This idea didn’t sell
and Floyd thought that it might be it was too under powered for the thrill
factor he had envisioned. Through he made many generational changes with larger
power plants, the idea just didn’t catch on.
Another of Floyd’s inventions was a modified track machine. This was to
be the one that made him rich. He rebuilt it on a hard tail frame so the
sensation of every ground pounding jolt would hit the enthusiast. It
looked good and had lots of power but people still didn’t buy.
See
Figure 2 click here
Floyd was not
dissuaded. He continued on with his pleasure seeking inventions that
would hopefully capture the world.
In 1930 at the age of 22, Floyd Corn took a partner, Kramer F. Coast.
Kramer came from a wealthy eccentric family of inventers. His father
Westerly (West for short) Coast had tried for years to invent a
non-burning, sweet smelling lye soap that could be dispensed from a
large drum through a copper tube into any outhouse. Unfortunately indoor
plumbing had been invented several years prior and the market for the
Coast Soap Shooter just wasn’t there. With the addition of a partner, so
was born the Floyd ~ Kramer company. Floyd kept up the family farm
growing feed corn and lima beans to pay the bills of his not so thriving
company. Kramer dabbled in smaller inventions on the side to earn extra
money to pay a settlement of a law suit from a tragic rash out break
involving his father’s test subjects.
In 1932 Floyd and Kramer developed a way to breed dachshunds and donkeys.
This idea came about due to the need for smaller, low cost
transportation, creating the first lowrider. This proved to be the most
lucrative product put out by the Floyd ~ Kramer Company to date.
See
Figure 3 click here
Taking the total
profits from the sale of twelve “Lowriders”, Floyd and Kramer invested
that four dollars and fifty six cents into a new design table. The ideas
started to flow then.
Three years later
the two partners decided to start building flying bicycles. This is going
to be the transportation of the future thought Kramer. With a few designs
built as prototypes the next generation of thrill machines had come
about.
See Figure 4 click here
These machines showed
the design talents of the Floyd ~ Kramer Company yet were not money
making ventures due to the lack of bravery from either of the men to
test their creations. Animal testing was out of the question due to the
lack of monkeys in the Midwest and the ground hog’s legs were just too
short to reach the pedals.
By 1942 the Floyd ~ Kramer Company had to change it’s name due to the
bad press still looming over it from the ground hog splatting incident
of seven years earlier. The building tension between the partners over
agreeing on a name for the company rendered a decision to use their own
last names. Thus the Corn Coast Company was born. With the advent of a
telephone in the store, Floyd and Kramer decided the name was too
misleading with people calling to order feed or seed for their farms. The two men decided to drop the “Company” from the name and use a word
that truly described what they did to modify the machines for their use.
Within two weeks of the original name change, the company was reborn
as “Corn Coast Choppers”.
In 1954 with both men having married and children already approaching
their teens, Corn Coast Choppers was still in business financed by the
original family farm. Keeping the company in business was the ever
driving force of finding the one machine to give the feeling of freedom
to anyone who wanted it. With the beginning of the leather jacket gangs
even popping up in rural areas it seemed logical to take the plunge into
motorcycle development.
By 1958 Corn Coast Choppers first line of their hand built motorcycle
was born. Not knowing much about motorcycles and taking the leisure aspect
of their quest too far, the two men came up with a reclined seat idea on
their very first custom machine. After many failed attempts to mount an
adjustable high back easy chair to a motorcycle frame, the two needed to
find a way to take a stationary seat and recline it back. So it was
decided to use a four inch diameter rear wheel to drop the backend of
the frame down getting a sleek looking leaned back machine.
Unfortunately the four inch diameter wheel only allowed a top speed of
two miles per hour. While testing their new model motorcycle with the
new extra wide four inch diameter wheel, riding side by side both Floyd
and Kramer were run over by an Amish family on their way to the Sears
Roebuck store.
The respective sons of the two (recent living impaired business
partners) took over Corn Coast Choppers. They decided that the design
was all wrong on the motorcycle line but wanted to keep that reclined
seat idea alive in honor of their fathers. Well, the nuts didn’t fall
far from the tree in this venture. The new entrepreneurs of the
floundering company decided to reverse their father’s idea and put the
small wheel in front and a much larger one in back and reclining as if
lying down facing up. There were two major flaws with this design,
although it was a comfortable riding position while the motorcycle was
stationary. The first flaw was the immediate loss of skin in forward
motion as the boys had forgot to design a rear fender. The second flaw
came from the use of the original four inch front wheel in front and the
lacking knowledge of center of gravity on the machine. As the rider
lunged forward from the painful wheel rub the momentum of this action
caused the loss of control and in some cases a forward roll of the
machine and rider.
With pride (and flesh) broken, farming still had to be kept up to
maintain an income and pay for the endeavors of Corn Coast Choppers.
Through another generation of the Corn and Coast families, the business
continued. As nary a motorcycle was sold in the many years of Corn Coast
Choppers being in business, in 2003 two brothers from Indiana, already
operating a motorcycle accessories and repair shop, purchased the
longtime company for the T-Shirt rights.
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