Every Bullitt so far has been a kit. You pick the frame, the box, the canopy, the motor, the colour – and somewhere between the order and the first school run, the best mechanic in your hometown bolts it all together. Some mechanics love us for this. Someone looking at the numbers at the back of the shop hates us for it. We've always liked it that way. We're Danes; we were raised on Lego. We built our website around the Bullitt Builder, our shop around it, fifteen years of stories around it.
Building a Bullitt is half the fun. The Kiddo is the first one we built for you.
Which means leaving the half we love most. We thought about that for a while. Then we remembered the half that was never up for discussion: the best engineer, the best bike. If you've ever doubted that second part, it's only because you haven't ridden a Bullitt yet. Everything else – every frame, box, canopy and colour – was only ever options.
It started, as these things tend to, with a conversation in the shop. Larry and Harry were standing over a 6100, a good bike, a parent's bike, arguing about everything you'd still have to decide before you could actually ride it. They argue about most things; the company is named after it after all.
Here's the part we've never really said out loud: the builder was the truce. All those options, all those frames and boxes and colours – that was how Larry and Harry never had to agree on one bike. Larry built his. Harry built his. You built yours. Nobody had to win. Half the fun, and a quiet way around the argument.
The Kiddo's builder has two questions: which colour, and how big your kid is. That's it. No way out. Which meant that, maybe for the first time, the two of them had to actually agree – on all of it. That, more than any drawing or weld, is the part that took a while. What they were chasing was easy to say and, it turns out, hard to settle on: a bike with nothing left to decide. Wheel it out, wiggle your big toe, go.
So we walked it over to Larry's bench. Larry is drawing and building Bullitt frames the way he has since before most cargo bikes existed, and as a rule he does not enjoy being told to keep things simple. Simple is harder. A bike with no options is a bike where every option has already been decided correctly – by someone who'd rather make one good thing than offer you a hundred half-things. We gave him two months. The drawing and the welding took about that. Everything before it – see above – took rather longer. He made exactly one. No menu. No and would you like.
The visible change is up top. The Kiddo wears a taller canopy – because the low, sporty one we love is, let's be honest about it, a seat for a four-year-old, and four-year-olds have a stubborn habit of turning into six-year-olds. The taller canopy buys you those years. Same Bullitt underneath. More room for the kiddo inside it.
It comes in five colours, all from the family you already know: Classic, Bollocks, Lizzard King, Moondog and Race. We didn't invent a new colour for this one – each of those already carries its own story, and its own tune, and we're not going to retell them here. The Kiddo isn't about a new colour. It's about a new way of getting one. (Though if you're asking us, and you're not, Bollocks, the yellow, is the one that wears it best. You probably knew that already.)
You'll notice the decals are a little different. You'll notice the head badge says something that isn't quite our name. We changed a couple of letters. We've done that before – ask anyone who's read the Race story, or anyone who stood in our Copenhagen shop back in 2008 while a customer pointed at a decal and asked, very politely, whether we had permission to use it. Larry and Harry have a long and frankly proud history of straying slightly off the legal path. Consider this chapter two. Or four. We've lost count.
There was never one right way to ride a Bullitt. Some haul timber, some haul dogs, some haul nothing at all and just like the way it corners. The Kiddo doesn't replace any of that – it opens the door a little wider, to the people who were never going to spec a build but always wanted in. Fair warning, though. People who come into the Bullitt world have a habit of never quite finding the way out.
When the first one rolled off the bench, Larry called Harry. He didn't say much. He didn't need to. He said: Harry… it's your baby.
Larry and Harry haven't finished fighting. They never will. For this one, though, they put the sword down – and let Kiddo do the talking.
Now kids, get in the bike.
Kiddo awaits.
