Well Made in America

Well Made in America - Asylum Mobilitarium

Harley-Davidson Motor Company is currently experiencing a slowdown in the motorcycle market. We all knew that it would happen eventually. Back in the summer of 2006, HD stock was at about seventy five dollars a share. As I type this, I notice that it’s almost at nine and a half! Now is a good time to buy, we hope that it will increase soon!

Harley has experienced several “crisis modes” in its history. According to the book, “Well Made in America,” they are the following;

1) By the start of World War I, HD was on a roll. Indian was its close competitor, with Excelsior-Henderson a close third. The other lesser brands bringing up the rear. The war hit at a time when the Company was heavily involved in racing and things were looking up. The government tasked the big motorcycle companies to build military machines for recon and messenger work. HD turned over its production from civilian to army within a few months. Police production was a priority as well. HD came out of the war in better shape than Indian because of wise decisions by the founders. These decisions would place Harley in a better spot for the next crisis to follow.

2) Ford came out with the Model T in the late teens. At one point the car was priced less than a HD motorcycle. In the early twenties, the public began seeing the benefit of having an enclosed vehicle. No longer could Harley market their product to the family man who wanted basic transportation for his brood. Sales plummeted during this time. The Company began to market bikes as leisure transport for the first time in its history. Still, the market was slim for bikes.

3) The Great Depression brought another blow to the Company just as things were improving. The founders wisely chose to shut down certain parts of the factory completely and lay off some workers. Indian on the other hand began building items such as refrigerators and washing machines in parts of the factory in Springfield that had previously built motorcycles. Harley’s police sales helped the company through this period. In the late thirties, Harley-Davidson and Indian were the only motorcycle manufactories in the states still standing.

4) As World War II began, the government asked the two manufacturers to come up with plans for a new military motorcycle. HD came up with the rare XA, based on a German DKW design, and the more common WLA. The Company built 88,000 of these models during the war. Besides the US, Russia accepted the bulk of the bikes under the Lend Lease Act. There are now collectors who pay Russian’s big bucks to find old WLA Harley’s sitting and forgotten in old barns and ship them back home to the U.S. Indian had never converted the Springfield plant away from building appliances so they were not in good shape to fill the orders from the Army and Navy like HD was. Subsequently, Indian never fully recovered from the war and folded in 1953.

5) After the war, the British began shipped bikes over to these shores. They were light, fast, and appealed to a younger rider. The hand clutch, which Harley only introduced in 1952, was also a hit. The cult movie “The Wild One,” came out in 1953. This movie was banned in England until 1969 by the way. Anyway, it was loosely based on the Hollister California incident in 1947. Parents were shocked at Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin taking over a fictional small town. What scared them the most was that the virginal female in the lead role so easily agreed to ride off on the back of Brando’s Triumph! What is ironic is that Marvin and his crew were on Harley’s, British Matchless bikes, as well as other brands. Brando and his gang were on Triumph’s and BSA’s. In all the hysteria, only Harley got the bad rap from the movie. Indeed, in the fifties, juvenile delinquents were often referred to as “Harley’s. The Company tried to fight this image for years. It was only in the eighties and nineties that HD started embracing the bad boy image. If only for a weekend, a guy that lives in a cubicle during the week could put on a black leather jacket and hopefully score with a biker chick that was going through her “Bad Boy” phase! Harley suffered in the fifties, but it was the sixties invasion by the Japanese that almost killed the Company.

6) At the beginning of the 1960’s Honda began an ad campaign that proclaimed; “You meet the nicest people on a Honda!” This was obviously directed to Middle America who had been bombarded over the years with negative stories about motorcyclists and how they would periodically rape and pillage cities and towns all over the country. Honda was successful with the “Honda Dream,” a step through bike that was as nice and friendly as a pink sweater! The Japanese dumped thousands of these and other models throughout the sixties in this country. Harley-Davidson had attempted in the fifties to market small bikes that appealed to a younger audience with mixed results. The Company acquired the Italian motorcycle manufacturer Aeromacchi in the early sixties. But it was the stigma of hooliganism directed toward riders of the orange and black that would forever taint the Company. The story of the demise of Harley in the decade of the 1960’s in part was because of the shift in the habits of the American motorcycle buying public. Another reason is that Harley was not able to keep up with the new technology in the bike industry because of lack of funds. And, it was the attitude of the grand-sons of the founders that the Company was invincible and that new tooling at the Juneau plant was not needed attributed to the Companies downturn and loss of market share as well. We can point to the fact that the Company went public for the first time in the mid 1960’s. The Company had always resisted doing this because of course of the Founders and their relatives wanting complete control.

7) In the late 1960’s Harley-Davidson was suffering from lack of sales and an old factory full of even older tooling. The Company began looking for investors to pump capitol into the only remaining American Motorcycle Company. A company with the name of Bangor-Punta approached HD to buy a majority share of stock. BP had a bad reputation at the time of buying rust-belt companies, dividing them up, and selling off the rest. There were no other big players waiting in the wings and it looked like it was a done deal. Fortunately, AMF Corporation was looking to expand its leisure activities branch and made a better deal than BP to buy the Company. It is lucky for us this happened. AMF has gotten a bad rap over the years because of shoddy workmanship of the bikes. In fact, it was AMF that ultimately saved Harley-Davidson. With AMF’s deep pockets, new tooling was acquired to build new types of bikes that Willie G was helping to design. The problem began when AMF tried to build motorcycles like they built bowling balls and pool tables. AMF pumped out so many bikes that quality was lacking. There were so many defective machines that came off the assembly line that motorcycles were not running when testing of the bikes happened before shipment to dealers. These motorcycles piled up at the end of the line and had to be made to perform to expectations before they were crated and sent out. Quality suffered again in the hands of owners. These bike riders were so disgusted with the product that many times the AMF logo was scraped off the bikes gas tanks and other areas. To find an AMF era Harley with the logo intact would and is a great find.

8) At the end of the seventies, AMF was tiring of pumping money into a losing proposition and began looking for a buyer for the Company. Luckily, executives including Willie G, and Vaughn Beal bought out AMF with a leverage buyout. It was a tough go for the first few years and many sleepless nights I’m sure. The new Evolution engine that AMF helped design in the 1970’s ultimately saved the Company just as the Knucklehead engine is credited in saving the Company during the last years of the Depression.

The late eighties and the nineties were great ones for the Company. There was resurgence in motorcycle ownership during the mid nineties. The aforementioned “Bad Boy” image that HD had fought all these years to overcome was now a selling point for the Company as bored guys and gals who wanted something different in their lives began accepting that lifestyle. Sales of black motorcycle jackets skyrocketed!

This decade also was a good one for Harley-Davidson. It was only in mid 2008 that the Company experienced a decline in sales. Like the other crisis modes that Harley has found itself in the last 105 years, hopefully wise ownership of the Company will guide it through these bad times as well.

I was recently asked what I thought of the Enthusiast and Hog Tales magazines becoming one publication. First I said,”Is nothing sacred?” The Enthusiast was the longest published motorcycle magazine in the world. Granted, lately the magazine seemed a poor relation to Hog Tales, which obviously the Company was putting forth more effort. The new rag is beautiful to look at, that’s for sure. But I’m not pleased with the pathetic attempt to appease Enthusiast devotees with the logo “Enthusiast” relegated to small print as an apparent afterthought sentence of explanation below the word “Hog” in very large type.

The next time you and your friends are hanging out at a bar and the conversation is lagging, instead of mumbling something about the weather, liven things up with a bit of bike trivia. For example, you could begin by asking what was the name of the machine that Dennis Hopper rode in “Easy Rider?” Some will know that Peter Fonda’s mount was called Captain America. Dennis Hopper’s Harley was called the “Billy Bike.” And if you know the plate number of Hopper’s bike, Ca.644755, you will certainly climb another rung or two on the Chapter status ladder!

One last bit of trivia. Both Harley-Davidson bikes used in the film were ex-LAPD motorcycles bought at auction.

I’m a big Rolling Stones fan! In fact I have a rare t-shirt from 1997 that had the HD logo and the Stones tour information on the shirt. As far as I know, this was one of the few times that the Company ever supported a concert tour.

Harley’s have always figured prominently with the Stones. For instance, in the film “Gimme Shelter,” which told the story of the end of the imagined “Age of Aquarius” after the peace and love Woodstock concert? It was of the 1969 Stones tour that ended with the disastourous concert at Altamont California. The Stones had hired the California chapter of the Hell’s Angels for site security. The only pay for the bikers was all the beer they could drink! Recipe for disaster!

In one important scene, you see Angel’s riding through the crowds on Harley’s to the front of the stage. A black man was beaten with pool sticks after he supposedly whipped a pistol out and was waving it around. The film has been analyzed over the years and sure enough there is a gun in his hand. Everything went from bad to worse after that. An Angel whacked Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane after Balin tried to stop a fight. Anyway, it’s an interesting film from an interesting time.

Also in the film is the legendary voice from the concert crowd at Madison Square Garden (where I finally saw the Stones in 2006,) obviously pleading with the band to play her favorite Stone’s tune, saying, ”Paint it Black, paint it black you devils!” There have been attempts over the years to find the female behind the voice but to no avail.



Bill (Willie Hank) Croom

Panther Creek HOG Historian since 2000

Youths led astray since 1955