Cushman

I have been pondering the development of my first post about Cushman for some time. I have collected a number of photos, but I am somewhat unsure how to identify certain models or model years. Here is the link to a timeline of Cushman history. You can see from this data that the company had been established long before beginning production of scooters in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1936. The first postwar models were the Pacemaker and Road King in 1946, and the first model badged as an Allstate and sold by Sears Roebuck appeared two years later. The Road King with its large, deluxe, styled body panels looked sort of like an early, economy version of the Harley-Davidson Topper.

The legendary Eagle, easily the company's trademark model, was released in 1950 with a Husky cast-iron engine. Outboard Marine Corporation bought Cushman in 1957 and continued to develop the Eagle. The Super Eagle, introduced in 1959, featured body panels that covered the scooter's rear section. The Silver Eagle became the top-dog Cushman with a 9 hp aluminum engine designed by OMC in 1961. I don't know what year the black one pictured here is, but my guess is that it is a Silver Eagle from the early Sixties. Note the silver right-side engine cover and kickstarter. This model also has the Super Eagle rear panel. Is this a Silver Super Eagle? Maybe a Cushman fan out there in Tiddlerosisland can enlighten me.

Cushman became the official U. S. distributor for Vespa at the beginning of '61, and the 1963 brochure I have includes three Vespa models, the Silver Eagle, the still very primitive Highlander, and the Trailster, a little yellow beastie with the old 8 hp Husky engine and a tractor-tread rear tire. You might look at the Trailster as a very primitive ancestor of the Honda Ruckus. That's certainly what it looks like! There is no mention of the Super Eagle with its smooth bodywork or the standard Eagle with the cast-iron engine, so I assume they had been discontinued from the line by '63; however, I have never been able to definitively ascertain if the Super Eagle bodywork continued as an option or not. Final Cushman Eagle and all other scooter production had ceased by 1966. The company was soon sold off from OMC and continued to build golf carts and variations of its Truckster for police departments until earlier in this decade.

Here is a broad outline of the Cushmans and their rightful place in Tiddlerosis. Like Mustang and Simplex, Cushman was an American brand that sold its primitive, but pervasive, machines to high school kids in the Fifties and Sixties. At least where I was in Mississippi during this period, Cushmans were far more prevalent than these other two pioneers. The Sears connection of the Vespas and Highlander added to the brand's availability, but the Eagles were by far the most common of the American-built Cushman models. The Eagles I have seen and ridden were mostly from the 1955-64 range, and most of these were of the manual start, cast-iron 8 hp variety. As we all know, Honda owned the whole market by 1965, so the last years of the Eagles were always a bit rare. My personal aquaintance with Cushman/Vespa was probably quite typical.

I got my first motorized transportation in the early spring of '63, a 1957 Allstate Cruisaire. In the summer of that same year, my dad bought an old Cushman Highlander from I don't remember who or where. It may have even been an Allstate version. The funny part of the story is that I had that primitive toad only one day! I rode it around the back yard once to discover how truly minimalized transport felt compared to my zippy three-speed Vespa. The big surprise to me was that Dad had already planned to trade in both scooters for a new Yamaha YG-1, which thrilled me silly, so by July I was no longer a scooter owner. Zippy-de-doo-dah! The Highlander was little more than two little wheels, a crude, painted handebar, and a big vibrator with an automatic clutch. My last memorable encounter with a Cushman would be when my Rotary Jet 80 blew a fancy Super Eagle into the weeds in a drag race. No, I cannot recall if it was a 9 hp Silver Eagle or not, but I believe it had the Super's sheet metal panels and it was probably about a '62 or '63 model.

Let's flash back a year or two so I can describe my first drive of a Cushman Eagle. Two neighbor boys, one a year older than me and one a year younger, owned at least two Eagles. Due to the ages of all of us at the time, I think I am about to describe the earlier Eagle owned by the older boy, the only one who would have been old enough for a license in 1961 or '62. I wanted a motorcyle or scooter so badly at that time that I could chew an old rubber tire, so one afternoon the owner and our respective parents let me drive that Eagle in a circle around their back yard. Of course I left a white track hours later. Although I had ridden several machines, including this one, as a passenger and had learned to drive a Harley-Davidson Super 10, this was my first solo effort on a Cushman.

The first thing anyone notices about a Cushman is that it has little wheels like a scooter, but tubular handlebars and a top-mounted tank like a motorcycle. The next thing you notice is the left-hand gearshift knob beside the gas tank and sprouting up from the engine, like certain ancient Harleys of the big hog variety. The two-speed gearshift is accompanied by an equally unexpected foot clutch. Back then the only thing that had an electric starter was a Honda, but even the kickstarter on an Eagle was unique to the brand. There was a pedal sticking out of the front of the engine. The pedal lay flat on the floorboard most of the time, until you reached down and lifted it up into its cocked position. Standing beside the machine, on the right side, you then held the scooter upright off its left-side stand, stood up on the pedal with your right foot, and threw all your weight down onto the pedal. If the Eagle didn't chirp on the first try, you then reached down and lifted up the ratcheted kick pedal and started over. Once the big four-stroke single pop-pop-popped into life, you swung your leg over from the wrong side of the beast, sat down and mashed in the heavy clutch with your left foot. The rear brake pedal was on the right, facing back at you up off the floorboard, sort of like that on a car, and the front brake was controlled by a lever on the left handlebar. Push the gearshift into first gear (I think it was forward) and ease out the clutch. Once you are going a decent speed, push in the long-travel clutch and pull the gear lever all the way back, through neutral in the middle, and you are cruising for a brusing from any Yamaha 80 or Super 90 that you haplessly may encounter!

See Also: Jim's Cushman Scooter Site
The Cushman Wikipedia Page