STREETHAWK STARRING REX SMITH – STARCAR? STARCYCLE! KITT WAS THE CAR, AIRWOLF WAS THE COPTER, STREETHAWK WAS THE MOTORCYCLE!

After bumping into Rex Smith a few weeks back I realized I had not blogged about his “Starcar” show from the 80’s, “STREETHAWK”!

Rex told me he didn’t know where the original motorcycles were, and he wanted to own one, real or replica!  Well as we talked, a fan of the show and the bike showed up and had a piece of the handlebars with him, and we started talking about his project to recreate the Streethawk bike, just as the Batmobile and Knight Rider fans etc. have done!  Finding an old bike as a donor kit may be hard to do, but this is a “from scratch” project!  Hopefully our combined efforts and information will help either find an original screen used bike or come up with a sharp replica for the fans who want one, as well as one for Rex!   So – if you want to get your own starcar, but don’t have the time, money or crazy to build a Back to the Future Delorean or Ghostbuster car, here’s a lower cost quest you can join!

Here are the facts:

Street Hawk’s Specs

MODEL: Top secret government project.
TOP SPEED: 200 MPH, 300 MPH with Hyperthrust
WEAPONRY: Laser Cannon, Machine Guns, Rocket Launcher
OTHER FEATURES: Infrared Cameras, Compressed Air Vertical Lift System, On and off road capability

Street Hawk before it’s conversion

This bike is similar to what Street Hawk looked like before its conversion. There was actually a total of 15 bikes made for the show and there were three different types of bikes that were used:

* A 1983 Honda XL500 was used to make the bike used in the pilot episode.
* 3 1984 Honda XR500’s were used to make the bike during the series.
* 11 1984 Honda CR250’s were used to make the bikes for the stunt scenes during the series.

The making of Street Hawk

Street hawk was originally designed by Andrew Probert. His design was used to create the bike used in the pilot episode of Street Hawk. Below are two of his concept drawings of Street Hawk. On the top is the original concept bike, and on the bottom is the final design after producers revisions.

Below are some pictures of the bike being converted into Street Hawk.

The bikes used in the show
From what I can tell there were four different styles of bikes used during the life of the show.

STYLE 1

The first was only used in the pilot episode and did not contain the missile launcher or machine guns. This was the bike originally designed by Andrew Probert. As an interesting side note, the bike used i the pilot was built by the same team that was involved in building the cars in
Blade Runner and the Last Starfighter.

STYLE 2

The second bike, which was designed by Ron Cobb 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 different from 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. As far as I can tell this style of bike was only used in the episode “A Second Self”.

STYLE 3

The third bike as you can tell has a much rounder nose than the second, but this is the only notable difference that I can see. This bike, I believe was used in the remaining episodes except “murder is a Novel Idea”.

STYLE 4

The fourth bike is different than any of the others. It is kind of a mix between the pilot bike and the bike used in the rest of the episodes. The main differences are that the front end still has the missile launcher and machine gun but the area where these are contained is very different. The other difference is that the exhaust has no detail. It is just plain silver with no black markings

The bike today

These are pictures of the one of the bikes from when it went up for sale on EBay in September 2000. It sold for $12,000 –

Here is a newspaper clipping from Wales about Chris Bromham, the current owner of one of the original bikes (Thanks go to Jonathan Jones for the scan).

I like this Chris guy, he is ripping it up on the original bike!

One of the bikes is also located at the Cars to the Stars museum in England.

IF YOU OWN, OR KNOW WHERE ANY OF THESE BIKES ARE NOW, WE WANT TO KNOW! WE ARE TRYING TO REUNITE AN ORIGINAL OR REPLICA BIKE WITH THE STAR OF THE SHOW, REX SMITH!
For lots more info on the series, visit the site where this info came from HERE!  Always great to find hardcore fans for each of the famous screen used Movie and TV Vehicles!