Kuwahara BMX

Kuwahara was founded in Osaka, Japan in 1918 by Sentaro Kuwahara. It was a family run business with help from his wife and eight children that made and sold bicycles and bike parts at first in his neighborhood, then growing and expanding more. In 1925 Kuwahara began to export bicycles and parts to Russia, China and Southeast Asia. Kuwahara closed their doors for business temporarily from 1940 till 1945 due to World War II. In 1947 Kuwahara reopened again for business and Sentaro Kuwahara became the first chairman of the board of directors of the first bicycle wholesale association in Japan. In 1959 the very first and small shipment of bicycles were delivered to the USA. Sadly in 1960 founding company president Sentaro Kuwahara passed away and his Son, Masao Kuwahara took over in his place. In 1962 Kuwahara sent it's first shipment of APOLLO brand sport (10speed or 12speed road racing) bicycles to Canada. In 1968 Kuwahara started exporting bicycles to the USA as private label bikes for other companies such as Schwinn, Takara, Puch, Concord, Apollo, Azuki and others. Kuwahara had never produced their own Kuwahara brand bike outside of Japan until 1972 when Kuwahara began developing BMX bicycles for the US, Canada, European and Australian markets. During the middle 1970's the BMX boom had started and Kuwahara was regularly exporting Kuwahara brand BMX's to these countries. In 1979 Takuo Kuwahara became the new (and present) President of Kuwahara. He started up a Factory Kuwahara BMX team each in The US, Canada, Europe and Australia. In 1980 Kuwahara also started developing and exporting Mountain bikes to Canada and Australia. In 1982 Steven Spielbergs hit movie E.T. featured Kuwahara BMX's and famous riders of those days including Bob Haro. Many famous riders raced for the Factory Kuwahara teams such as Gary Ellis, Clint Miller, Joe Baumert, David Cullinan, Lee Medlin, Leo Green, Matt Harris and Kevin McNealve. Kuwahara International was founded and Kuwahara road race bikes were used by the Canadian Olympic team at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea. Kuwahara's were also used by Germany, Switzerland, and Finland of the KUWAHARA MTB mountain bike XC team for the world cup. 1991 saw Kuwahara win it's first world championship UCI MTB series in Switzerland. In 1992 due to the escalating Japanese Yen, Kuwahara closed it's Japanese export business in Osaka and shifted that part overseas where it could be more competitive. Kuwahara International was then moved to Osaka, Japan where many interesting new bicycles were designed and won many awards around the world. In 2001 Universal Studios opened an amusement park in Osaka, Japan and Kuwahara set up a small exhibition for display. With the last remaining KZ frames from the 1980's Kuwahara re-released a reproduction model in the classic E.T colors. Kuwahara is still active today and very popular in Canada and other European countries.

ET Model
ET-1 or KZ-2.5

Kuwahara was not really well known until after the release of Steven Speilberg's classic movie E.T. in 1982. BMX was all the rage back in those days and Steven Spielberg had noticed lots of kids riding BMX bikes all over the place. This is when Mr. Spielberg decided to have some action scenes involving BMX bikes. Kuwahara Bikes in Osaka, Japan was contacted by one of Mr. Spielbergs staff and they tried to place an order for 40 bikes. At first the person who took the call at Kuwahara thought this was a prank phone call and hung up. The next day Spielbergs staff called again to confirm the order and Kuwahara though slightly embarrassed had them get in touch with Howie Cohen of Everything Bicycles who was the main distributor for the US market. Howie Cohen sat down with the movie studio staff at Universal and went through several designs until they came up with the classic Red/White ET colors that were also approved my director Steven Spielberg as well. Universal Studios entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Kuwahara and Everything Bicycles for the E.T. bike. After the release of the movie, Kuwahara started mass producing these E.T. colored bikes. There were three types of them made. Two of them were the loop tail type frame with KZ type double gussets. The loop tail E.T. bikes were split up into two grades. One was a "High-end" type with Japanese made components and a higher price and were almost only sold in serious bike shops. The lower price loop tail E.T. model featured less exotic parts to help keep the cost down. Pictures of the two types of loop tail E.T. bikes can be found below. The third E.T. model was the cheap Apollo frame model with it's single front gusset and three holes pressed into it, non-loop tail rear, and full high tinsel steel frame. The Apollo Kuwahara E.T. bikes were about half the price of the loop tail bikes and featured mostly Taiwan made parts, however the frame was made in Japan. The Apollo E.T. or the cheaper version were sold in toy and department stores and are sometimes known as the Toy store E.T. model **(Be careful not to mistake a toy store model or Apollo E.T. Bike for a real E.T bike with the loop tail)**

Kuwahara E.T. models look very similar to the earlier KZ models with the double gusset but have totally different drop outs. The E.T. model has only one hole and is a looptail style (Similiar to the NOVA) while the KZ models have three holes punched into the rear drop outs and are Non-Loop tail style. Have a look at the pictures below