#GottliebDaimler

I had the good fortune to be standing in a driveway in Northern Virginia last year staring at what appeared to be a box-stock, showroom condition, 1978 Yamaha SR500. Yamaha introduced the big thumper in ’78 but it was meant to evoke images of the earlier BSA Gold Star, G-50 Matchless, and Norton Manx, big sporting singles that had preceded it from a bygone, kick-start only, era. A time when men wore porridge pot helmets and had square cut jaws and steely faced grimaces that prevailed in places like the Isle of Man, or at Normandy and El Alamein as the case may be, if their racing season was interrupted by unpleasantness on the continent. This particular pristine big single had been purchased by its original owner 35 years ago from CycleSport in Northern Virginia, and here, several thousand miles and three and a half decades later, I had just bought it, along with an impressive collection of spares.

You can’t get much more of an American icon than Harley-Davidson. Ranked among the most recognizable brands in the world, along with the likes of Coca-Cola and Apple, the manufacturer has overcome its fair share of ups and downs over the years but is still here to tell the tale. Needless to say it has certainly earned the right to celebrate a century and a decade of building two-wheeled freedom machines exclusively in the U S of A.