Rolling Thunder Or Woofers On Wheels

Car stereo suppliers may want to take note of a new trend cropping up in Queens, N.Y.

Teen boys are cobbling together 3,000-watt car stereo systems costing as much as $4,000 and installing them … on their bicycles. Yup, those small Mongoose bikes. No DIN openings here.

The New York Times, describing the phenomenon yesterday, said one kid packed a 50-CD changer, three 10-inch woofers, a bank of mids and two tweeters behind his bicycle seat and on the handlebars. It looked like he was carrying two dual woofer boxes on the back. These are die-hard fans folks.

While the industry wrings its hands over kids who don’t care about sound quality anymore or who prefer their iPods and a set of ear buds to a boom-boom car, it may turn out to be not true! These kids are certainly not happy with an iPod in their pocket; they are peddling around Queens with the equivalent of mini fridges on their two wheelers.

One kid took his bike to a “car show” and found out it merited a 150dB rating. Sounds like the kid pedalled to a sound-off contest. Just what the industry has been trying to achieve — a resurgence of kids who would do anything to cram more power in their Civic. It turns out that next wave of kids are not Civic owners — they are just bicycle owners.

Everyone’s crying over another year of double-digit declines, and suppliers are moving into the marine market to offset sales (and failing), but maybe you guys are missing the boat, so to speak. Maybe someone should bring a show bike to International CES.