There were five bikes made for the character Elliott (Henry Thomas) to use in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, just two are known to survive to the modern day. The bike you see here is this is one of them, and it’s now being offered for sale.
Apart from the key human actors in the movie, and the actors who wore the E.T. suit, Elliott’s BMX bike remains one of the most enduring characters in the film, being used for that scene towards the end of the film when the escaping children, and their alien cargo, fly up and across the face of the setting sun.
These are still from the famous escape scene. Five bikes were made for each of the five boys, so there were 25 in total. Almost all of them were later parted out or returned to original condition and sold. The bike you see in this article is one of just two surviving Elliott bikes. Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Universal Pictures contracted Howie Cohen and Robert Cardoza of Everything Bicycles in Torrance, California to build the BMX bikes that were used in the film. They initially supplied 25 bikes in total, five identical examples of each of the five bikes seen on camera.
Each of the five bikes had its own custom paint scheme, styling, and customization. The bike’s used by Elliott were 1981 Kuwahara BMX models finished in a memorable red and white paint scheme, with gold wheels and hubs, chrome handlebars, gold sprockets, and gold pedals.
The Fate Of The Original Bikes
Once filming wrapped, the 25 bikes were returned to Everything Bicycles, and sadly they were mostly dismantled and sold off for parts, or repainted to return them to standard factory appearance and then sold. Fortunately a small handful of the originals did remain unchanged, though just two of the original five Elliott bikes are known to still exist.
The bike you see here is one of these two surviving Elliott bikes, it was customized by Cohen and Cardoza after film production ended to create a promotional bike that was used in the first Kuwahara E.T. ad that appeared in BMX Action Magazine in July of 1982 (see it below).
A few months after being used in the promotion, the bike was given away as a prize in a contest, amazingly the winner of that contest kept it from late 1982 right the way through to 2019 – and importantly they preserved it in original condition.
The current owner, now seller, bought the bike in September of 2019. It was then given a careful cleaning and the original (dry rotted) tires were replaced with “new old stock” (NOS) tires from 1982. The original tires do still accompany the bike and are included with it in the sale.
Above Video: This is the famous scene from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in which the five boys, all riding their own custom Kuwahara BMX bikes, manage to escape from their pursuers, helping E.T. get where it needed to be.
Also included in the sale are those original dry rotted tires, so the new owner can return it back to as-used E.T. condition if they so wish. This bike is notably different from the E.T. replica bikes that were made as part of the Kuwahara promotion in the early 1980s.
The bike is now due to roll across the auction block with Julien’s on the 12th of June with a price guide of $40,000 – $60,000 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Julien’s + Universal Pictures
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
