Sunday, December 23, 2007

Television: Street Hawk.

Desperate Television producers create a motorcycle: Street Hawk

Via: Street Hawk online:
"Street Hawk was a short lived television series that aired back in 1985 on ABC. It lasted only one season and there was only 13 episodes ever made. The show was about a cop name Jessie Mach who was picked to test a top secret government project called Street Hawk. His partner Norman Tuttle, the designer of the motorcycle, was in charge of the project. Jessie would cruise the streets of L.A. on the bike while Norman sat back at command center guiding Jessie. Together they would fight crime on the Streets of Los Angeles.

Street Hawk made its debut on January 4, 1985 on ABC at 9 PM EST and lasted until May 16, 1985. It's such a shame that this show didn't last longer than it did. Some say the show just came a little too late. All of the other "Super Vehicle" shows such a Airwolf and Knight Rider already had their fans and there just wasn't room left for Street Hawk.



There were actually a total of 15 bikes made for the show built by The Bike was constructed by Gene Winfield's 'Rod and Custom Construction, Inc.'and there were three different types of dirt bikes that were used, a 1983 Honda XL500, a 1984 Honda XR500 sand a 1984 Honda CR250's were used to make the bikes for the stunt scenes during the series.

Probert's Final concept
Street hawk was originally created by designer of "Star Treck The Next Generation"Andrew Probert. His design was used to create the bike used in the pilot episode of Street Hawk.

Probert put a lot of serious thought in to the design of the bike..like these clever hand controls
..and the must have for those irritating driving cellphone users: a cowl mounted laser.


The second bike, which was designed by Illustrator and Cinema production designer (example: the film "Aliens" for one) Ron Cobb-witch was quite different from the bike used in the pilot episode. The nose now contains a missile launcher and machine guns. The body of the bike is also very differentfrom the bike in the pilot episode. As you can tell there isn't nearly as much detail in the exhaust of the bike and the body of the bike is much wider.

One of the bikes from when it went up for sale on EBay in September 2000. It sold for $12,000 -. This bike is now owned by Chris Bromham, one of the stuntmen for Street Hawk. There are currently 2 replicas of the bike being built. One of them will be a replica of the pilot bike and the other will be a replica of the series bike"

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