The first Harley-Davidson motorcycle, constructed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1903, was the creation of Bill Harley and Arthur and Walter Davidson. Harley, the only college graduate of the group, designed the motorcycle, Arthur Davidson drew up the patterns, and Walter Davidson built the bike.
The prototype Harley-Davidson was a conventional single-cylinder 400 cc engine bolted beneath the crossbar of a strengthened bicycle frame. There were plenty of problems with this arrangement; the main one was the frame was unable to handle the power and vibration of the engine, and it kept
breaking. Eventually, after several rebuilds, the wheelbase was extended for stability, heavier steering head and wheel bearings were
used, the frame tubes and wheels were made thicker, and "final drive"
was achieved by a leather belt uniting the engine with the rear
sprocket, allowing the rider to control the speed of the bike by
tightening or loosening it. Harley-Davidson had a motorcycle. By
1905, the Milwaukee factory was producing eight of them per year.
In 1906, orders mounted to forty-nine, and an
American industry was born. By 1910, the oldest of the three Davidson
brothers, William, had joined the team as Vice President and Works
Manager of the plant. Three thousand bikes were built and sold, and
the original single-cylinder 3 HP engine was replaced by a V-twin,
two cylinders mounted at a forty-five degree angle to each other, and
upgraded to 5.35 HP.
The two-cylinder V-twin engine was, and still
is, the heart of the Harley-Davidson.
The company manufactured its V-twins in 45 cu.
in. and 74 cu. in. engine sizes (about 700 cc and 1200 cc), which
were nicknamed Flatheads because of the flattened shape of the engine
heads, and began to battle for sales, both domestic and military,
with its arch rival, the Indian motorcycle company.
At times, Harley's marketing techniques were
less than sportsmanlike. At one point they encouraged their dealers
to scrap any non-Harleys which came into their shops as part exchange
for a Harley-Davidson as a way of getting the Indians off the road,
and only a decline in public image forced them to withdraw this
"exchange" offer. Forced to look for advances in engineering and
style in order to compete, Harley first added a "buddy seat,"
allowing the Harley man to travel with a "companion," then
revolutionized the engine by manufacturing the 1000 cc, 61 cu. in.
and 36 HP overhead-valve V-twin. It was nicknamed the "Knucklehead"
because of the shape, like the prominent knuckles of a clenched fist,
of its rocker covers (the covers above the engine heads).
The Knucklehead was the forerunner of the
Harley fleet. It is the source of the general Harley nicknames Twin
and Big Twin, and stands, even today, as a "classic" Harley, a very
desirable "base" bike for many "complete restorations" or "customs."
The Knucklehead had speed and it had style, but, unfortunately, it
leaked oil. Lots of oil.
In 1949 Harley-Davidson manufactured the
Panhead engine, with pan-shaped rocker covers. Built to solve the
oil-leak problem by placing the previously external oil lines inside
the engine casing and upgrading the oil pump to regulate pressure,
the new Pan also featured aluminum engine heads for a lighter and
cooler performance. This configuration, however, created a problem of
its own: insufficient oil pressure (partially cured, in later models,
by the factory). In the style department, Harley replace the Springer
forks, two large springs (shock absorbers) mounted on top of the
front forks of the bike, with a hydraulic system (no springs). They
christened their new bike the Hydra-Glide.
Through this combination of factory innovation
and creative marketing, Harley buried the Indian in 1952, only to be
met by new competition from England—Triumph, Norton, and BSA. The
Milwaukee boys turned to the U.S. government for help, petitioning to
have a 40% import tax placed on all non-American motorcycles. They
were turned down.
They were forced to compete; this time on the
racetrack, with a 750 cc, 45 cu. in. Twin. This was a fiasco that was
hard pressed to make 80 MPH on the straights and consequently lost
every race. So Harley tried again, creating an all-aluminum engine
bored out to 883 cc named the XL Sportster. The XL could do 100 MPH,
and finally beat the Triumph on the oval, also earning itself a
reputation as a red-hot "street bike." It was not, however, red hot
enough in the sales department to keep the company from financial
trouble, and in the mid-1960s Harley went public, selling just enough
stock to finance an upgrade in their product. Believing that an
electric starter would make their heavier bikes more accessible to
the general buyer by doing away with the "kick," they built the
Electra-Glide, then spent the remainder of their money revising the
hydraulically temperamental Panhead engine, giving birth in 1966 to
the Shovelhead, after which the company was once again broke.
Rescue (or disaster disguised as rescue) came
in the shape of a leisure industry conglomerate called the American
Machine and Foundry Company, or AMF. AMF bought Harley-Davidson for
twenty-one million dollars, then proceeded to crank production up to
fifty thousand motorcycles a year (about three times their previous
production), too many machines to be effectively screened for quality
control. The consequence was that Harley-Davidson got an even worse
reputation for reliability, or lack of it.
At the same time, the Japanese invaded the
American motorcycle market at the cruiser end with the Honda Gold
Wing, and at the street-hot end with the Kawasaki 900 range. The
Japanese product was fast, relatively inexpensive, and reliable.
In 1978, the AMF petitioned the Tariff
Commission to slap heavy import duties on the Japanese bikes—and
failed. Then, in a competitive effort, they increased the engine size
of the big bikes to 1340 cc and added a five-speed transmission to
the touring models, following that with the Sturgis, a sports bike
with a Kevlar belt-driven motor replacing the chain named after the
annual bike meet in the hills of South Dakota. It was anything to
increase that elusive reliability factor and win the bike market back
from the Japanese. It didn't work, and in 1981 the AMF bailed out,
selling Harley-Davidson back to Harley-Davidson, or, specifically, to
a management-based group led by Chairman Vaughn Beals. Beals took
control just as his company was going under for the third time.
In a last-ditch effort, Beals (on behalf of the
reorganized Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company) petitioned the Tariff
Commission, requesting high import duties on only those Japanese
bikes over 700 cc. The Commission finally came through, giving Harley
a five-year period over which tariffs on big Japanese bikes would
start high then taper off. It was the breathing space Harley-Davidson
desperately needed, time to go back to the drawing-board on both
design and marketing.
In 1983, Milwaukee launched the V2 Evolution
engine. Using aluminum alloy for both heads and cylinders and burning
unleaded fuel, the Evolution was—for the first time in Harley's
history—oil tight and reliable. Harley-Davison had finally stepped
into the future—or more accurately the present.
In the same year the Harley Owners Group (HOG)
was formed, a Harley club sanctioned by Milwaukee and open (in the
USA) to anyone purchasing a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The idea
behind HOG was to link the buyer to the manufacturer. Willie
Davidson, grandson of William Davidson and head of the design
department, began spending time with and listening to the people who
rode his motorcycles. He understood their desire for the classic look
of the old Harleys coupled with the reliability of the new Evo
engine, and it was through this combination that Harley-Davidson
truly found its feet.
The new Heritage Softail (the cruiser of the
fleet) was an updated Hydra-Glide from 1949, and the Sportster (the
racing bike, light and easy to handle) still looked as it did in
1952, but was now powered by a choice of either an 883 or 1100 cc
engine (and now a 1200 cc engine). In 1988, eighty years from their
inception, Springer forks were reintroduced to create the FXSTX
Springer Softail—a factory custom.
For some buyers it may have been nostalgia; for
others, including myself, it was just plain perfection.
In America they call the 883 the ladies' bike,
because at 463 lds. with an overall length of 87 in. it is nearly two
hundred pounds lighter and half a foot shorter than any of the Big
Twins. In theory, that makes it a lot easier to throw around—or in my
case, after twenty years out of the saddle, to ride at all.
I say "in theory" because I believe a lot of my
apprehension regarding the 1340s was psychological. They looked too
big to ride. In fact, because the saddle height of a stock
(factory-built) Springer Softail is actually two inches closer to the
ground than that of a Sportster, thereby lowering its center of
gravity, the bigger bike is arguably easier to balance. On top of
this, I genuinely loved the looks of the Sportster, basically just a
frame and an engine, like a skeleton draped with muscle. About as
lean as a bike gets.
And then, of course, there was the money
factor. When I bought the 883 the price on the road was a touch under
£4,000, less than half the cost of a new Springer Softail and
just about a third of an Ultra-Glide, the flagship of the Harley
fleet, including radio-cassette player, intercom, CB radio, leg
shields, and enough luggage space to take the wife and kids off for a
week in St. Tropez—sort of an open-air caravan.
The Ultra-Glide was never my idea of a "lean
machine." I couldn't get into the idea of wheeling along the highway
while having a conversation, via the headset-style intercom, with the
person behind me. "Ah, pilot to copilot, pilot to copilot, do you
read me, over?" Then again, I've lost some of my best Raybans while
twisting my neck at seventy miles an hour, trying to communicate with
a passenger: the wind, after scattering my words and splattering my
face with saliva, catches the outside rim of the shades and removes
them from my nose, sending them up then down beneath the front tire
of the inevitable truck in the middle lane, while I ride on ... teeth
gritted, wind pounding my bared eyeballs, and tears streaming down my
cheeks.
Now that's real biking.
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