The year was 1970, and McMullen's AEE Choppers was rolling in dough. While AEE was on top of their game due to an ever-expanding inventory of specialized products for the growing custom motorcycle market, they did have competition. Only Jammer Cycle Products had the same form of monthly promotion as Tom McMullen. Joe Teresi, Mil Blair, and Lou Kimsey came up with a brilliant magazine idea titled Easyriders, while Tom McMullen produced Chopper, The Custom Motorcycle Guide (AEE's catalog), and STREET CHOPPER, soon to be joined by Hot Bike.
While the Paisano trio opted to have a clean chopper book crammed with entertaining editorial and few ads, Tom's approach to publishing was just the opposite. He held the editor's feet to the fire, mandating that every issue of STREET CHOPPER be produced with tech articles and advertising almost exclusively devoted to AEE Choppers' line of products. Tom knew that every part which appeared on the pages of STREET CHOPPER immediately sold both over the counter and through AEE's massive mail order system. Tom personally opened the mail after huge amounts of cash began showing up for parts orders. It would have been easy to cheat someone out of an order which was placed with cash, but to the best of my knowledge, no one ever was. Guess the mailman never knew that he was often times delivering thousands of dollars in cash in an envelope mailed with a ten cent stamp!
AEE Choppers was very, very profitable, and Tom began to accumulate the man toys to prove it-a big pool house up in the hills of Fullerton, street rods, a big Lincoln, and did I mention that he learned to fly and purchased an airplane? But that is a whole different story for a future issue.
We were a small, tight-knit group of editors, and about the only comeback we had for Tom's editorial demands for more and more AEE Choppers coverage was a demand that his research and development guys continue to feed us cutting edge products. How many times can you publish a magazine with the key tech article being about lacing a spool hub, even if you opted for a straight lace install? I remember writing an article called "Brake the Law" when AEE introduced a mini four-inch hub with internal brake shoes. It would not stop the bike, but would hold it on a hill, a small hill. But it would get you by if stopped by the law for not having a front brake. Cute, but I'm sure AEE sold hundreds of them based on the fact that you looked cool and bent the law.
The key to this month's column centers around yet another innovative product, which made its debut atop Tom McMullen's Project Shovelhead on the cover of the November 1970 issue. Tom's Shovelhead was built to promote AEE's new Ultra Narrow square tube Springer frontend, with the rigid frame being fit with flat sheet metal panels and square molding to carry the square theme throughout the bike. A number of fuel tanks were fashioned to fit the bike, all with the square theme. No matter what, the first few resembled a shoe box or a coffin at best. That is until the Wing Tank was fashioned.