Years ago, FedEx came to us for 112 Bullitts. Why? Bullitts are among the strongest, lightest and most efficient commercial cargo bikes on the market. DHL uses them. So do independent messengers around the world. They’re notorious. There was just one problem. Every bike FedEx ordered had Milk Plus printed prominently on the top tube. Milk Plus is the drug-laced drink served at the Korova Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange. FedEx was not amused. But, Bullitt was. FedEx covered every logo with reflective tape, which only made the joke better. Today we’re going to rip off the tape so you can discover the origins of each Bullitt colour.
Bluebird
Bluebird is the original Bullitt colour from 2008, when Bullitt launched the world’s first mass-produced aluminium cargo-bike frame. The first Bluebird ’71 was two-tone, borrowed its appearance from classic racing bicycles like the Gios Torino and carried a portrait of Italian racer Francesco Moser. (“’71” was chosen simply because 1971 was a great year for films and music.)
Five years later, Bullitt was approached by Bluebird Speed Records, the Campbell family organization responsible for protecting—and extending—the legacy of Malcolm and Donald Campbell’s record-breaking cars and hydroplanes. So when the Campbell family discovered their name on a Bullitt, they recognized a kindred machine. They asked Bullitt to create a centenary edition, painted in the same RAL 5012 blue as the original Bluebirds and displayed alongside them in London. Today’s Bluebird carries a bird on one side and Copenhagen’s ancient three-tower emblem on the other. Bullitt began in Copenhagen, but it can fly anywhere.
Clockwork Orange
Clockwork was one of the original Bullitt colours from 2008. Its orange-and-black paint came from the Saab Sonett III, a small Scandinavian sports car built between 1970 and 1974. It had a fibreglass body, front-wheel drive, manually operated pop-up headlights and only 65 horsepower. It didn’t have a big engine but it was fast. Why? Because it weighed almost nothing. If this sounds like a Bullitt, we might also note that the entire rear window opened into a cargo area. Sounds a lot like a Bullitt. It looked cool too.
The Clockwork graphics have changed over the years, but they have only become weirder. One version carried Che Guevara probably because cargo bikes bring a revolution. Then came Grauballe Man, Denmark’s 2,400-year-old bog-body celebrity. Larry vs Harry offers no explanation for his appearance beyond “Why not?” Today, Clockwork carries Beethoven—“Ludwig Van” to Alex, the teenage antihero of A Clockwork Orange. Can all of this be wrapped up in a theme? Nope.
Milk Plus
Which takes us to Milk Plus, the drug-laced drink in A Clockwork Orange. Larry vs Harry offers little explanation for the name, but the connection is clear enough: something wholesome with a little extra kick. That also describes the Bullitt. It safely carries children to daycare, while messengers ride the same bike like fuel-injected outlaws. Most other cargo bikes just bring the Milk. Bullitt brings the Plus.
Lizzard King
Every year, the bicycle industry gathers in Germany for Eurobike. We generally meet Hans (aka Harry) from Bullitt at a pub because Larry vs Harry is still too punk rock to have a booth. The cargo-bike hall itself contains three kinds of company: established players trying to legitimize the category by looking as corporate as possible; start-ups with wild ideas and worrying balance sheets; and Chinese copycat brands. One of the latter famously buys the advertising space above every men’s urinal to promote its fake Bullitt. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, that’s a strange place to see it.
The story goes that Bullitt’s dealers kept asking Hans for a matte-black bike. Then he arrived at Eurobike and discovered that every other bicycle company had made one. So he didn’t. He went home and produced Lizzard King instead. The name combines Jim Morrison (the Lizard King), with ZZ Top, who supplied the second Z. It fits the Bullitt ethos: a cargo bike can open the doors of perception without surrendering its outlaw cred. The graphics added a lizard, snakeskin chainstays and two stars marking Bullitt’s victories at the Cycle Messenger World Championships in Tokyo in 2009 and Chicago in 2012.
Classic Black
Well, Bullitt did make a black bike. They just refused to make it matte. While the rest of the industry was flattening everything in sight, Bullitt chose a deep piano gloss borrowed from old automobiles. They called it Classic, then left the name off the frame entirely. If you’re a classic, apparently you don’t have to introduce yourself.
The earliest versions carried a small portrait of a famous boxer, although Bullitt declines to tell us which one. In 2015, an LP appeared on one side and Denmark’s 3,400-year-old Sun Chariot on the other. One carries music around a turntable; the other carried the sun across the sky. Why do they belong together? Look, this is Bullitt. You’re expected to do some of the work. After all the bright colours, cult films, dead revolutionaries and rock stars, Classic remains one of Bullitt’s best-selling colours. The dealers were right that people wanted black. They were just wrong about the matte.
Moondog
For years, customers asked Bullitt for a dark royal blue known in Denmark as Kongeblå. Bullitt delivered Indigo in 2015, then discontinued it a year later because it was supposed to be a limited edition. That decision became harder to defend after Danish time-trial champion Rasmus Quaade used one to set the cargo-bike speed record, averaging 42.3 km/h while carrying 26 kilograms of energy drinks.
Indigo blue returned in 2020. Bullitt planned to call it Apollo, then decided NASA might object to a cargo bike entering the space race. Instead, they chose Moondog—the blind American composer who performed on Sixth Avenue dressed as a Viking. His outfit made him a New York landmark and his music influenced Philip Glass and Steve Reich. The Moondog’s graphics include a moon, the solar system, an ancient Scandinavian wheel and a carved hand that appears to be reaching for a smartphone. Past and present in an inexplicable bricolage. Whatever, we love it.
Major Tom
When Bullitt launched in 2008, it offered three black bikes and not one red. One dark November afternoon, Harry decided this was ridiculous and asked Larry to replace ten incoming Black bikes with firetruck red. Red made sense in Denmark, where a child’s first bike is often a red Winther tricycle.
The graphics began with an octopus and Sputnik: underwater life versus space travel. Red later became “Pepper,” with boxing gloves representing Larry versus Harry. They considered calling it Toro, then remembered that an Austrian energy-drink company already had strong feelings about red bulls. Today it is Major Tom, a name shared by two British icons who pushed beyond ordinary limits. David Bowie’s Major Tom travelled into space; cycling world champion Tom Simpson tested the limits of the bicycle on Europe’s hardest climbs. The graphics bring them together with a guitar and a rocket.
Bollocks
The yellow Bullitt began because Larry vs Harry wanted another bright colour. Its first graphics placed bananas on one side and NASA’s Pioneer Plaque on the other. The bananas represented our beginnings in the trees; the plaque carried an image of humanity into space. Evolution, apparently, fits on a top tube.
Yellow later became Submarine. In the Beatles film, the music-hating Blue Meanies drain Pepperland of colour until the Beatles arrive to restore it. This was rebellion in its optimistic 1960s form: music, imagination and love would defeat authority. Even the Blue Meanies were invited to join the party. Then came Bollocks, after the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks. The title meant “stop talking bullshit,” and displaying it in a record-store window led to an obscenity trial. Yellow Submarine says music can change the world. Bollocks tells the Blue Meanies where to stick it.
Race
Race takes Bullitt back to the film that gave the bike its name. The original version carried Steve McQueen’s portrait until a customer pointed at it and asked whether Larry vs Harry had permission. The answer was no. The portrait disappeared, and the customer was eventually hired to prevent similar adventures. The colour comes from British Racing Green, first used by British cars at the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup in Ireland and later made famous by racing Bentleys and Jaguars. Steve McQueen’s Mustang in Bullitt was technically Highland Green, but the family resemblance is obvious.
Today’s graphics refer to Svajerløbet, Copenhagen’s cargo-bike race. The original competition ran from the 1940s until 1960, when the city’s working bicycle messengers raced the same machines they used to carry beer, potatoes and everything else Copenhagen needed. Larry vs Harry helped revive it in 2009. The potatoes are now excluded, but the beer flows.
Rip off the Tape
So, which colour should you choose? After bog bodies, drugged milk, Vikings, punk trials and unauthorized Steve McQueen portraits, there is no sensible answer. Just don’t cover it with reflective tape.
