The fuel tank is from a Mustang motorbike, for instance, but had to be heavily reworked, and the pearlescent yellow flames were applied three times before Chandler and crew were finally satisfied they matched the movie bike's paint job. Just like the Captain America recreation, it took many hours of research to get the Billy Bike clone up to Chandler's expectations. The Billy Bike looks like it was made to ride." Captain America looks fragile, like a gazelle. "But afterward, the more I thought about it, the Billy Bike is the one I imagined myself riding through the countryside.
"Watching the movie for the first time, my eyes were riveted on the Captain America bike," he remembers.
It was simply a more restrained, more rideable custom.īeau Allen Pacheco was editing Big Twin magazine in the mid-1990s when this recreation of the Billy Bike was commissioned by Los Angeles Times publishing tycoon and inveterate bike/car collector Otis Chandler. The Billy Bike even ran a front brake while the other motorcycle made do with a stopperless spool hub. Mufflers were shorty duals, not zoomy fishtails. The sissybar was barely there – certainly not the high-rise cloud-scratcher fitted to Fonda's ride. Where Peter Fonda's iconic chopper was all stretched out and gangly-looking, the "Billy Bike" was tighter drawn, with a conservative 6-inch fork extension compared to the Captain's 12-inch-over setup. When moving again, the seat automatically goes back up to optimal ride height.While the "Captain America" chopper got top billing in the movie Easy Rider, it was the sidekick machine ridden by the late Dennis Hopper's character Billy that won the hearts of real riders. When stopped, the seat height comes down to a lower position. The technology is optional on the Pan America 1250 Special. True, there has never been such a thing, an adventure touring bike in the Harley portfolio, but isn’t that the best reason? There has also never been a motorcycle with automatic seat height adjustment. The tank holds 21.2 liters, and the bike weighs (only) 245 kilograms.
The basic variant features a fully adjustable suspension with 191 mm of travel front and rear, five riding modes, one of which can be self-programmed, plus cornering ABS and lean-angle-sensitive traction control. And now they’ve gone and launched a big touring enduro called the Pan America 1250. Wasn’t the sound of roaring engines sacred? Yes, it was, but on the other hand, the brand (and its riders) doesn’t necessarily stand for clinging to rigid conventions. The basic engine design – two cylinders at a 45-degree angle – remains a stylistic feature of many Harley-Davidson engines to this day, paying tribute to the company’s long tradition, though that doesn’t mean you’ll never see an electric Harley turn the corner. Because on a Harley, the horizon is always a little wider, the sky a little higher, the roads a lot wider. This was true for the founders, the company directors – and it is true for anyone who sits on a Harley and rides off into the sunset.
Harley-Davidson means being free to think and do things differently. A myth fed by a long tradition, by images from the big screen that have indelibly etched themselves into our minds – defined by the vision of freedom, which runs like a common thread through the history and narrative of the brand. Harley-Davidson is more than a cultural phenomenon it is a myth. It was still true in 1991, when Arnold Schwarzenegger raced a Fat Boy through the canalized Bull Creek in the North Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles in Terminator 2.Īnd it should still be valid today, when you get on a brand-new Pan America 1250.
The motto was certainly relevant in 1969, when Peter Fonda rode his chopper over America’s highways in Easy Rider. Because the spirit behind the slogan was already there when mechanical engineer William Harley, along with brothers William, Arthur and Walter Davidson, put together their first “motor-bicycle” in a woodshed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Freedom for All.” Harley-Davidson’s advertising slogan dates from 2017, although the year doesn’t really matter.