American Freedom Machines: The Story of Harley-Davidson

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American stories. When Margie Siegel was a teenager, she had a boyfriend with a motorcycle. The boyfriend he was forgettable. The motorcycle, well, it wasn’t. Since that time, she’s written about motorcycle history for Classic Bike, for Motorcyclist, Motorcycle Collector, American Iron and Motorcycle Classics. She is also vintage editor for Ironworks Motorcycle Magazine.

00:00:37
Speaker 2: Here she is with the story of Harley Davidson.

00:00:46
Speaker 3: If you ask a non motorcyclist to name a brand motorcycle, any motorcycle, any type of motorcycle, the first name that comes to mind, and probably the only name, is Harley Davidson. Allies are not only well known, they inspire a lot of passion. How many other companies’ logos are tattooed on people’s bicycles motorcycles. There is something about motorcycles, the experience of moving through the air at speed, that attracts people, And if there is something about motorcycles in general, there is more than a mere something about Harley Davidson motorcycles. Harley Davidson has been building motorcycles for well over a century, and in that time its products have acquired an aura. People who ride Harley’s are seen as bad and antisocial and a lot of other things, even though they in real life their accountants. When most people look at a horror they are seen not just the vehicle, but a cultural icon. It wasn’t always like this. When the Davidson brothers and their friend William Harley started out to build motorcycles at the turn of the twentieth century, they were only one of over one hundred small American motorcycle factories, all scheming and competing and trying.

00:02:25
Speaker 2: To make it big.

00:02:27
Speaker 3: Out of all those aspiring US businesses, only Harley Davidson has continuously made motorcycles. William S Harley and Arthur Davidson, who were the two friends who got Harley Davidson off the ground, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and they may have been in the crowd when Edward Pennington a confidence man, I mean a real crook, and he shuttled between the USA in England depending on which country was getting a little too hot for him, and he demonstrated a motor powered cycle in Milwaukee in eighteen ninety five. This was a huge deal, although no one has ever figured out how Pennington’s motorcycle ran because the design violated several basic laws of physics. This event may have sparked the idea of building a motorcycle in William and Arthur’s minds. Well in nineteen hundred, it was very possible to build a motorcycle without violating several laws of physics. Many of the necessities for a successful motorcycle had been invented by the eighteen nineties. The French Didion Button Company was manufacturing a lightweight and relatively reliable inlet over exhaust engine that could be adapted for use in a two wheeler. And at this time a lot of people had been riding bicycles, and we’re getting very tired of riding bicycles uphill, and we’re looking for something that would help get from point A to point B and have you arrive at point B not totally exhausted. The Didion Button motor was being imported to the United States, where it was dissected and copied. By nineteen oh two, at least thirteen different companies were building motorcycles in the United States, and they were all using variations of the Didion motor. Either they were using the principles that the Didon motor was built on, or they were just simply copying it. Now, although the Harley Davidson motor used the same valve configuration of the Didon motor, it wasn’t a copy. They were doing their own effort. Arthur Davidson had three brothers, and he got joined in his effort by his brothers, and by nineteen oh three a prototype was built, tried out, found to not have enough horsepower, and scrapped in favor of a second prototype, which was a success. It did get you up a hill, and there were some big hills in Milwaukee. The first bike was sold in nineteen oh four. Within a few years, the enterprise was selling motorcycles, hiring employees and very important if you want to stay in business making money. Now what distinguished Harley in the Davidson’s effort For the numerous other backyard motorcycle factories that were springing up at this time, Harley Davidson had a lot of advantages. First, location, location, and location location is very important. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the center of the American Industrial Revolution, with nearby sources for the raw materials needed to grilled motorcycles. Milwaukee was well served by both railroads and Great Lake steamers. Bringing in iron and tires and sending out a completed product was not difficult or really expensive. Milwaukee boasted a skilled workforce, it needed little training to produce quality goods, and lastly, but not leasily, Milwaukee produced beer, and beer has always been important to motorcycling. The second thing that Harley Davidson had going for it was quality control. Due to the factory’s competent workforce. The Harley Davidson was well built and for its time reliable. It had more cubic capacity and more horsepower than competing efforts. Although Harley Davidson’s were not particularly innovative, nobody cared at this point. But people wanted wanted to do was get to work or get to wherever they were going. Now, you may ask why didn’t they just jump in their cars. Well, in nineteen o three there were cars, and they were expecsive, and they were complicated, and they needed constant maintenance, and motorcycles were actually faster, and you needed someplace to keep a car. And if you lived in the city, you had no place to keep a car. And the people who had cars were rich and had enough money to hire a chauffeur, and the chauffur would spend all day basically maintaining the car. When the chauffeur was not driving a milady about to tea or wherever she else was she was going. Harley’s at this point were transportation. There was no horror involved. The major thing that people looked at for Harley was this is cheaper than a horse and buggy, and I can get where I’m going on time. The third thing that Harley Davidson had going for it was at accorded investors and avoided borrowing money. Indian, the largest motorcycle manufacturer of the pre World War One period, borrowed huge sums of money in order to build a foundry. The banks interfered with the operation of India to the point where Hendy and Headstrom, the founders, both retired. In contrast, Harley’s investors either didn’t meddle with the business or offered good advice, which, to the brothers in Harley’s credit, was listened to and acted on. So here you have a well and efficiently run company making quality goods. And the last thing that Harley Davidson had going for it was that it marketed these quality goods in a cost effective manner. Arthur Davidson wrote hundreds of miles to demonstrate his motorcycle and sign up dealers, while Indian and several other manufacturers supported the hugely expensive and total blood sport of board track racing. Harley Davidson entered in duros, which were a form of motorcycle competition where speed does not count, but arriving at a checkpoint at a precise time does. Early endua competitions emphasized reliability and an ability to cope with varying road conditions, which is exactly what the person of the time was interested in. But one of the brothers, Walter Walter Davidson, entered these endurance races on a regular basis. He did very well with them.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Margie siegelill tell the story of Harley Davidson when we come back. More of the story here on our American stories, and we continue with our American stories. Harley and the Davidson brothers began competing with their motorcycles in endurance competitions where speed didn’t count, but.

00:10:19
Speaker 2: Ruggedness and reliability did. Here again, Margie.

00:10:23
Speaker 3: Siegel, by a nineteen oh eight, Harley Davidson was well known in the Upper Midwest but pretty obscure nationwide. That year everything changed. Walter Davidson won a national enduro. This one win was widely reported on. It put the company on the map, and sales went from one hundred and fifty bikes for the year of nineteen oh seven to one one hundred and forty bikes sold in the year nineteen oh nine and three thousand, eight hundred and fifty two motorcycles in nineteen twelve. So here you have an American motorcycle industry which is humming along, which is producing motorcycles that are bought by an average person who can’t afford a car, and then nineteen thirteen appears, which is the watershed year for the American motorcycle industry. The first thing that happened was that Henry Ford came out with a Model T. The Model T Ford offered weather protection and load carrying the ability for a little more than the price of a two wheeler. So instead of buying a motorcycle which couldn’t carry a whole lot and one passenger could actually afford and maintain, which was important, a car which could carry goods to market a lot of goods and take three or four passengers. So the motorcycle industry shrank about by the reason of that. The motorcycle industry also shrank because the war broke out in Europe. Many motorcycle companies had imported bearings and magnetos from Germany. World War One ended the availability of these components, but opened up new opportunities for war production. So one door opens, one door closes, and a lot of people who had been building motorcycles stop what they were doing and bid on war contracts. The number of US motorcycle manufacturers shrank to about a dozen, and one of those dozen, of course, was Harley Davidson. The Davidsons and Harley decided that if their business was going to expand, they needed to enter road racing for the publicity value, careful planning and training of trackside crew along when newly designed eight valve racers produced wins and prestigious races in nineteen sixteen. Now you look at what Harley Davidson is doing at this point. They don’t just decide, well, we’re going to go racing, let’s hire some racers. They carefully plant, they carefully train the cackside crew. They spend a lot of time with stopwatches. Everything is tested out, and they won a bunch of races. And when the US entered World War One, which was shortly after they started winning races, Harley didn’t sell every motorcycle it produced to the government. It provided about fifteen thousand motorcycles for the war effort, but continue to supply its dealers, and at this point Harley had quite a few dealers all over the United States. Indian, then the largest American motorcycle company, shipped every motorcycle it made during World War One to the US government starved its dealers. People couldn’t get Indians and they bought Harley’s instead. So between good publicity from race winds in support to its dealers throughout the war, Harley Davidson entered the nineteen twenties in an excellent position, a very good position, except for one little problem. The Eclipse Machine Company, which is now Bendix, was suing Harley for patent infringement. The Eclipse suit did have some validity, and Harley Davidson kept the litigation going for years until the four founders had enough money to arrange a settlement. The case settled in early nineteen twenty nine, and Harley immediately paid off the settlement amount. This was a big disappointment to Eclipse. Eclipse had pursued theation with the idea of taking over Harley, and the settlement payment was this huge disappointment. Harley’s mainstay from World War One through the nineteen twenties were inlet over exhaust F series and J series V twins. These were simple runnigod motorcycles that could be repaired by anybody with some mechanical skill, and a lot of them were hitched to an amazing variety of commercial sidecars. You don’t see commercial sidecars these days, but in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties it was a big deal. You had some very narrow streets in the cities. They were very crowded, and a four wheeler couldn’t get through, but a package truck, and that’s what they call these commercial sidecars could. So Baker would have a delivery vehicle, which would be Harley Davidson hitch to a sidecar that was modeled to look like a loaf of bread, and people who were delivering candy would show up in a with a package truck and it would look like a little cottage with lace curtains. And there were all sorts of different inventive side hacks which could not only haul goods around crowded cities, but also advertise the owner’s business. The founders were not content just to sell bikes for commercial use. They became concerned about a low number of motorcycles sold for sport, and they decided to revive motorcycle clubs. So they also decided that to be a boon to dealers as well as Harley’s factory, the clubs would now be run out of dealerships, which was a good thing for the dealers and also gave people a place to meet. Clubs were a really good thing in a few years because they got Harley Davidson, its dealers and an awful lot of rioters through the depression. You really do gotta have friends. And then in the summer of nineteen twenty nine, a lot of bad things happened. In nineteen twenty nine, Harley introduced a seventy four inch twin, the V. The early VS were a total disaster. Every single bike sold between August and October nineteen twenty nine had to be rebuilt with a factory issuing parts and instructions in the dealers supplying the labor. And it says a lot for the relationship between Harley and its dealers that the dealers were willing to do this for free. Harley didn’t pay them.

00:17:51
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Margie Siegel tell the story of Harley Davidson, and my goodness, what a series of transformations. They survived being hit sideways in nineteen thirteen by the model T. It comes in at about the same price as your motorcycle, and it’s covered and it can carry stuff. But they survive, and they survive by acumen and sharp business and marketing strategies, getting into the performance end of the business and then ultimately to clubs. In other words, had to build a brand. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of Harley Davidson, And it’s a Milwaukee story. And location, location, location, Well, it’s true Chicago, Milwaukee at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Lakes, access to railroads, access to goods and supplies, and Harley Davidson took advantage of all of it. When we come back, more of this remarkable story here on our American stories, and we returned to our American stories. For the nineteen twenty nine model year, Harley Davidson introduced their first side valve.

00:19:46
Speaker 2: V twin engine motorcycle.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: It was a disaster because Harley had built a great relationship.

00:19:52
Speaker 2: With its dealers.

00:19:54
Speaker 1: The dealers pledged to provide the labor for free, with the factory providing parts and instruction for rebuilding the engines.

00:20:02
Speaker 2: Here again, Margie Siegel.

00:20:06
Speaker 3: Now the side valve disaster got straightened out. People started buying motorcycles again, and then they stopped buying motorcycles because the depression started to take hold. The factory had to lay off a lot of workers. Dealers had to cut their operations to the bone. But the goodwill Harley had built up over the past thirty years got the company through. Harley collaborated with Indian. By this time, Excelsior Henderson had gone out of business due to the depression. To encourage club racing under new Class C rules. Class C was another good thing that happened during the depression. This was amateur racing and people who would go out and race, and their club would come out and support them, and people would have fun and enjoy themselves and not be quite so depressed, And the companies were encouraging this because they were too proke to hire a factory team. In nineteen thirty six, Harley produced the Knucklehead, which was its overhead valve twin, and the new Knucklehead stirred interest in sales. So Harley’s doing better, but now it’s facing a new challenge. You see things go up, things go down, and we’re looking at World War Two. After numerous tests, Harley won the US Army contract for motorcycles, in large part due to what Harley has always traded on rre a good construction, a larger motor, and quality control. The other candidates for that contract just broke down war. After the war was over, the company rapped out civilian production and upgraded the product many xgis road and the rest of the nineteen forties were good times for Harley. However, within a few years veterans were settling down, raising families and trading the motorcycle in for a washing machine, and the good times kind of ran out. In the nineteen fifties, sales dropped to the point where Harley Davidson sometimes took on some contract work for General motors. There were bright spots in the nineteen fifties. The introduction of the sportster in nineteen fifty seven stirred interest in sales like the knuckle had had twenty years earlier, and the people did cape riding, some people did. The number of people who rode dropped a lot. The people who did ride were outside the mainstream. They looked different, they dressed differently, and they seemed tough, and they seemed anti social, and these were very attractive qualities to teenagers growing up in a conformist culture. Now Here we have the aura starting Harley is becoming synonymous with toughness and attitude, and some people really like that idea. But it wasn’t enough people, so there weren’t a lot of Harley sold. When the good times restarted, though it was in large part due to a most unlikely cause. A Japanese company, Yes, a Japanese company named Honda. Honda established an import depot in Los Angeles in nineteen fifty nine and spent a lot of money making motorcycle popular and mainstream. In the nineteen fifties, motorcycling was kind of antisocialist, but now people could ride bikes and not be thrown out of their apartments, which happened to one woman I talked to. Kids learned to ride on the new important mini cycles, and as soon as they could get necessary together, bought a Harley because Harley’s were bad and tough, and the had the aura the impact that the imports didn’t, and young people wanted to buy into them. Now, with the resurgence in riding came a new interest in motorcycle events. The American Motorcycle Association had been sponsoring gypsy tours, which were rides in campouts, often with entertainment and racing, since the nineteen twenties. The nineteen forty nine Hollister event was part of a gypsy tour. This is the event that ended up on the cover of Life magazine. Now, for the record, nothing happened. I’m sorry, nothing at all happened. I’ve talked to several people who were there. A whole bunch of people showed up. This was a family event. Their wives and girlfriend showed up. This was not an invasion force, and people drank some beer and enjoy themselves. The cops closed off a couple of streets for drag racing. There were some bar fights, people got busted for drinking too much. I mean, what’s different than the normal Saturday night. The photo with the guy on the bike surrounded by bottles was staged by a board Life magazine photographer who was tired of standing around there and not seeing anything to photograph. In the nineteen sixties, these events Laughlan, a ton of Beach Lauden, and the granddaddy of them all, Sturgis exploded. Thousands of people showed up for the experience of hanging out with fellow bikers and watching some racing and drinking a little beer. These events, and many smaller local events, have continued to the present day. There’s a myth that bikers are loaders, and much of motorcycling is very social. All these events are social events. So here we have Harley Davidson. Motorcycling is becoming real popular and the company is trying to expand to catch the wave of motorcycle interest, but the years of low sales had emptied out the capital reserves and it can’t do it. At the end of nineteen sixty eight, American Machine and Foundry bought out Harley Davidson. Now people are really unhappy with American Machine and foundry. American Machine and Foundry is bad. It’s caused all sorts of problems. Anything that bad that happened to Harley is because of American Machine and Foundry. Not true. The AMF buying out had good points and bad points. AMF pumped a lot of money into Harley Davidson, allowing the factory to modernize. However, AMF also demanded that the assembly lines be speeded up past anyone’s ability to put out a quality product, and selling an unreliable motorcycle to some large guys who are not really patient and understanding is kind of not a good idea. Irate customers and unhappy dealers demanded that something be done. In nineteen eighty one, a group of Harley executives, aided by a friendly bank, arranged a buyout. Harley was its own company again, and after a few rocky years and it was really rocky for a few years, started to regain customer trust and respect. Harley also started its own company club, Harley Owners Group, which is called hog Mostly and it continues to be a social center for riders based on the local dealership. See how all these ideas just get recycled, but they get recycled because they were then people like them. HAG is so successful that is studied in business administration programs. So the years after the buy out were boom times for Harley. Once the got over that hump, there were wait lists for new bikes. Harley Davidson fielded a flat track racing team, sponsored different road racing efforts, and even built its own road racer, and it also upgraded the product. The Evolution motor of the nineteen eighties gave way to the twin Cam also known as Cliqui of the twenty first century, and later to the Milwaukee eight for eight valve. So here’s to Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson has weathered changing tastes, environmental protection, legislation, economic ups, economic downs, and ups and downs in the business environment. The company has successfully dealt with all challenges in the last one hundred and eighteen years, and it’s coming up with new stuff. It just introduced an electric motorcycle, the Live Wire, and a new adventure bike with a new engine. So crack open a beer and drink a toast. Here’s to Harley Davidson and the next one hundred and nineteen years of great motorcciens. Margie Siegel signing off had.

00:29:35
Speaker 1: A great job by Greg Hengler in a special thanks to Margie Siegel for telling the story of Harley Davidson.

00:29:42
Speaker 2: By the Way.

00:29:43
Speaker 1: Order her book Harley Davidson, A History of the World’s most Famous Motorcycle. Go to Amazon dot com for the usual suspects. It’s a terrific read and in the end well it chronicles the sheer fun and love of.

00:29:57
Speaker 2: Riding a Harley. And if you have and done it by the way, you don’t know what you’re missing. This is Lee j. Habib, and this is our American Stories.