The crafty and creative minds at Vintage Works, a custom machine shop out of Wisconsin, made that childhood dream a reality with a custom built speeder bike.
The speeder was first seen in the 1983 classic film "Return of the Jedi". The Replica Prop Forum, a Facebook group devoted to people who recreate high quality props from films, first posted about the bike. The entire speeder was custom built by Vintage Works using CNC machined aluminum and a hand-formed aluminum body. It may not levitate, or tear through the forest moon of Endor at dizzying speeds, but it still performs well on the road and tops out at 70 mph. It also comes with hubless wheels to get a look slightly closer slightly to a levitating effect. A 400-watt sound effect system produces a classic speeder bike screech. It's hard to hear the sound while the bike is barreling down the road, but it turns out to be a pretty amazing bit of technology.
"With one push to the red power button, the programmable logic controller sends a signal to multiple pneumatic solenoid valves to let the air out of the front and rear air suspension, foot pegs, and also signals the sound system to change to the "power down" sound effect," Vintage Works posted on its Facebook page along with this video:
It sounds pretty close to the real fake thing! The Vintage Works Facebook page contains pictures and videos from every step of production. It's fascinating to see the craftsmanship that brought to life this incredible piece of movie history. Vintage Works makes it look easy, but that's because the company is a machine shop dedicated to this sort of thing. Unless another bike is ordered, there probably won't be a second ready-made speeder for super fans to purchase. Vintage Works told commenters on its Facebook page that the bike was "insanely expensive" to build.
