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Harley-Davidson Motor Company Recent Titles in Corporations That Changed the World Toyota K. Dennis Chambers Harley-Davidson Motor Company Missy Scott Corporations That Changed the World GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scott, Missy. Harley-Davidson Motor Company / Missy Scott. p. cm. — (Corporations that changed the world, ISSN 1939–2486) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–313–34889–1 (alk. paper) 1. Harley-Davidson Motor Company—History. 2. Motorcycle industry— United States—History. I. Title. HD9710.5.U54H3765 2008 338.7'62922750973—dc22 2008018704 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2008 by Missy Scott All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008018704 ISBN: 978–0–313–34889–1 ISSN: 1939–2486 First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Ginny Rabbit This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Chapter 1 In the Beginning 1 Chapter 2 Meet the Founders: Building the Dream Team 4 Chapter 3 Born in a Basement 9 Chapter 4 There’s No Stoppin’ Us Now: The Growing Years, 1904–1908 15 Chapter 5 The V-Twin Ushers in the Years of Innovation and Expansion, 1909–World War I 24 Chapter 6 The Roaring Twenties 41 Chapter 7 The Depression Years and Another War 51 Chapter 8 Years of Challenge and Change: The 1950s 68 Chapter 9 The 1960s Rock but Who Rules? 79 Chapter 10 The Long Dark Years of the 1970s 95 Chapter 11 The Eagle Stretches Its Wings 108 Chapter 12 The Eagle Flies Higher and Higher and Higher: The 1990s to the Present 124 Chapter 13 Harley-Davidson Today and Tomorrow 143 Appendix A: Harley-Davidson Timeline 155 Appendix B: Engine Development Timeline 171 Selected Bibliography 173 Index 175 This page intentionally left blank Preface When I was 10 and living in Marine Corps project housing in Southern California in the 1950s, I had this boyfriend. He was 10, too. My mama, good Southern lady that she was, put him right at the top of her undesirable- playmates-for-my-daughter list because he was rowdy, went anywhere he pleased at all hours of the day and night, had black curly hair that was too long and rarely combed, wore old jeans and white undershirts (or worse, no shirt at all), and would spit anytime and anywhere he felt like it. Even in front of Mama. He was an outlaw. Of course, I was forbidden to hang out with him. But that made him even more delicious, so we’d meet up secretly and spend hours riding our bicycles all over the project. He taught me this neat trick of attaching playing cards to the forks of the wheels with clothespins so the cards hit the spokes as the wheels went round and made it sound like a motor bike. It annoyed the neighbors and delighted us to no end. So we pinned on even more cards. Didn’t make the bikes any louder, but the sound was definitely deeper, richer. You know, a here-we-come-and-we’re-cool kind of sound. Both of us wanted real motorcycles badly. Outlaws at 10. Ten years later, I was a college sophomore at a fine Virginia university, coming of age in the wild, defy-authority, question-everything world of the 1960s. The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Jimmy Hendrix, sit-ins, hippies, flower children, JFK, Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, protest marches, Yippies, Woodstock, sex, drugs, and rock and roll were turning everything upside down, inside out, and sideways. And I still wanted a motorcycle. I got one, too. I emptied my savings account and bought a used, tricked-out Honda 305 Superhawk that had been stripped down and re- built with more Harley parts than Honda, including cylinders bored out for Harley pistons. It was a powerful machine and about the only thing left of it that was Honda was the name on the tank. Red with lots of chrome. It was fast, it was loud, and it was as close as I could come to a Harley on $350. I loved it. We won’t discuss my mama’s reaction. Every spare moment that I wasn’t in class or doing homework, I was out on that bike, cruising around the back streets of Williamsburg or x Preface flying down the Colonial Parkway, which ran along the James River, my face in the wind, totally reckless, feeling free. The speed limit on the Parkway was 45, but I figured that was only for cars, certainly not for bikes, and definitely not for me. And I often thought of that boy in California, even though I’d long forgotten his name. Was he doing time, studying to be a stockbroker, or was he roaring down the coast highway on a big Harley? I have Bill Harley to thank for that shiny red jewel in the crown of my youth because he started it all. Like me and what’s-his-name in California, he wanted more from his bicycle than what he had, but unlike us, his vision grew out of nothing except his own imagination and genius. He wanted a bicycle with a motor. People must have thought he was nuts. But young Bill Harley didn’t care what they thought. He was an outlaw with a big dream. He kept working on his designs for a small, gas-powered motor, and, with the help of his friend Arthur Davidson, finally built his first “motor bicycle.” They didn’t care when it turned out to be a semi-flop because it couldn’t make it up hills without pedaling. They just took it back to the shop, enlisted the help of Arthur’s brother Walter, redesigned the motor and made it bigger, and, in 1903, they produced a fully functional motor bi- cycle that made it up the hills on its own. It was black. The Davidsons’ sis- ter, Janet, hand painted the gold pin-striping and original Harley Davidson logo on the tank. It still had pedals, just in case. The dream had burst into full life, and there was no stopping it from that point on. Personal trans- portation was changing forever, people stopped snickering behind Bill Harley’s back, and the legend began to stir. The cadre of friends kept making their bikes bigger and more power- ful, and in just a few years, Harleys were winning cross-country endur- ance races, as well as winning on the tracks where bikes hit 100 miles per hour and had no brakes. Police were chasing criminals on Harleys, and rural mail carriers traded their horses, mules, and bicycles for Harleys. Harleys were the machine of choice in both World Wars, and returning servicemen kept on riding them when they got home. Harley’s growing reputation for fine craftsmanship, durability, and easy maintenance was building a brand loyalty the competition couldn’t touch. Over the years, new models and savvy marketing took Harley- Davidson more and more into the mainstream, and before long, every seg- ment of society had die-hard Harley riders. The introduction of a series of touring bikes (aka Full Dressers) with their big saddle bags, windshields and full-fairings made open road, long-distance traveling comfortable and fun. While I was writing this book, I ran into a couple in their 70s in the parking lot of the grocery store, with matching Full Dressers, traveling south from Vermont. “Where are y’all headed?” I asked. “Who knows?” the wife said. “We were thinking about Florida, but might hang a right as we get further south and head West instead.” Talk about outlaws! I kicked Preface xi myself all the way home for not having my camera and some release forms with me so I could photograph them for the book. OK. So now we will talk about the outlaws and the outlaw mystique that surrounds Harley. My definition of outlaw does not include bank rob- bers and car thieves. My outlaw is that freedom-seeking wild child in all of us, the part of us that is the rebel, the nonconformist, the part that bends the rules and sometimes breaks them just a little bit, the part that doesn’t want to be stuffed into the same box as everybody else, the part that must do the very thing we’re told absolutely not to do, even if only in our imagi- nations. Get the picture? I think that if more people would let that outlaw loose every now and then, there would be fewer prescriptions for Zoloft and Valium. Motorcycles are just the thing to let the outlaw spirit fly, and they got a big boost in that direction with the 1953 release of The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin. It’s true that Brando rode a Triumph in that movie, but Marvin rode a Harley. Suddenly, leather jackets, motorcycle boots, smirks, and attitudes were in. Motorcycle sales boomed. Motorcycle clubs of every size, shape, and description grew all over the country, and more and more weekend warriors left the office or assembly line behind and hit the road.

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