THIS STORY may or may not be an urban legend: a woman found herself on a lightly traveled highway with a flat tire and a dead cell phone. It was getting late, and she was terrified. A long line of motorcycle riders thundered past, and two big men, clad in black leather, stopped and approached her car. As she cowered behind her steering wheel, both men took cards out of their wallets and held then up to the window. One was an accountant, and his friend ran a hardware store.
Accountants don’t normally get to be pirates, or rescue damsels in distress. But on a Harley-Davidson, anything can happen.
Harley is a tough outfit, having survived when the hundred other American motorcycle manufacturers in business in the early twentieth century went under. It survived by building a reputation for reliability, by excellent management and by more than a little luck. The main secret of Harley’s success was that the company was able to market its motorcycles as the answer to what the public needed at any particular time. In the early days, it was cheap transportation. In the World War I era it was police vehicles and short-distance urban commercial transport. In the late 1920s it was sport.
Relaxing at the clubhouse on a hot day.
A happy group of competitors pose for a photo in the 1920s.
Starting in the late 1920s, Harley-Davidsons increasingly became the basis for social organizations based around riding to scenic destinations and parties. In many cases—Daytona, Laughlin, Sturgis, the party was the end destination. After World War II, some of these organizations, composed of shell-shocked veterans, gravitated to the fringes of society. Many people have found these groups, “one percenters,” fascinating and romantic. The “one percenters” rode Harley-Davidsons, and many law-abiding people have found riding Harley Davidsons a great way to be a pirate for a day.
In a society where people move around a lot, where families are fragmented, where many people are searching for someplace to belong and a sense of community, owning and riding a Harley-Davidson gives people—both men and women—a place to belong, somewhere to go, a feeling that someone will watch out for you.
A Harley-Davidson will take you out on roads that you never knew existed, just to go, to ride, to experience what is out there. A car isolates you from your environment. A motorcycle plunges you into your environment, whether the sun is shining warmly over your shoulder, or cold rain is splattering down on your helmet.
And if that were not enough, riding in a group, pipes roaring in an industrial symphony, stirs the soul in some mysterious way. The sound can be explained as the exhaust note of a single throw 45-degree V-twin gasoline motor, but that really doesn’t explain what it is about a Harley-Davidson. There really is nothing like it.
Riding down a country road on the Panhead. Harley-Davidson has sold sidecars for years, and continues to offer a sidecar option for its touring models.