>> NARRATOR: What outlaws and lawmen ride. Bare bones choppers and full- boat tourers. Jet-propelled, mind-controlled, two-wheeled flying machines. Must-have boys' toy... that's also a surefire cure for a traffic jam. Now, "Motorcycles" on<i> Modern</i> <i>Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> >> NARRATOR: Throw a leg over the saddle. (<i> revving</i> ) Kick it into gear. Grab a handful of throttle... and a faceful of wind. >> DAVID EDWARDS: There's a sense of speed, there's almost a euphoria of speed that you just can't get in any other vehicle. >> JAY LENO: I have the kind of motorcycles where people are just amazed that I can physically get to the destination. "What? You got here in that?" >> DON CANET: I think riding a motorcycle is about the closest thing to flying an aircraft. I'm talking about flying an aerobatic plane or a fighter jet or something where you feel some G-loading in the saddle. >> JOHN BURNS: And the whole thing is just the neatest little ground-bound little jet fighter transportation. You can get one for 10,000 bucks. They're cool. >> NARRATOR: You're aboard a century and a half of technical wizardry and cultural notoriety. >> ULTAN GUILFOYLE: Our music, our literature, our films are about the great themes of the 20th century. Love, death, adventure, danger, speed. All of those are encapsulated in the motorcycle, and then some. >> NARRATOR: Obviously, there's more going on here than just two wheels and a motor. >> JESSE JAMES: When you see "Waaaaaah," like that. "What the hell was that, did you see that?" You know, when people are freaking out seeing it, they only get a 10-second glimpse, you know, as they're daydreaming in the middle lane and it passes them in the fast lane. >> NARRATOR: So what is a motorcycle? Is it transportation or just a fast, pricey toy? >> MIKE METZGER: A motorcycle in my eyes is a way for people to transport themselves from point "A" to point "B." In my game, point "A" is the ramp, and point "B" is the landing. >> NARRATOR: It's a vehicle that can do back-flips and burnouts, wheelies and stoppies, and flirts with 200 miles an hour. Like anyone would need such a thing. >> JEREMY McGRATH: I think that maybe not everyone realizes they need a motorcycle. Once they experience what it's about, then you would never not have one. >> NARRATOR: There's something in the machine that's powerfully seductive. A cult that's somehow encoded into its nuts and bolts. Traditionally, a motorcycle begins with the frame-- a metal skeleton that supports the front fork, gas tank, saddle, and rear wheel assembly. The frame cradles the engine, configured like the American style V-Twin, the British Vertical Twin, the dirt bike single cylinder, the flat-twin BMW Boxer, or the Japanese four- cylinder inline engine. Not that more exotic engine types haven't been tried, but is it still a motorcycle when it's got a car engine? How about a jet engine? >> LENO: Well, let's fire it up. First thing you do is, you turn the key. There's the TV screen, which you would see also in your rearview. It says "Hi, Jay." Okay, now you're ready to go. >> NARRATOR: Check out Jay Leno's turbine-powered Y2K. Your eyes say sportbike, but your ears say jet. (<i> engine roars</i> ) >> LENO: Your neighbors will love you. It sounds like a jet engine, it sounds exactly like what you hear at the airport. I mean, when it goes down the street, you see the heat rising off the back. You've got 1,000 to 1,500 degrees coming off the tailpipe, so that tends to, you know, you just see the ripple effect as it goes down the road when someone else is riding. It's great fun. >> NARRATOR: What makes the Y2K go? A chopper engine-- that is a helicopter-surplus Allison Rolls-Royce jet turbine. Lightly used. >> LENO: Aircraft engines have to be certified so many hours and then torn down, but you still got thousands and thousands of civilian hours left on them. So we put them to good use and he puts them in motorcycles. >> NARRATOR: The engine weighs just 135 pounds and makes for a comparatively light 500-pound sportbike. But that's pretty much where the similarity ends. >> LENO: The thing about a jet is the faster you go, the faster it goes. Most internal combustion engines, the faster you go, they tend to slow down. With a jet, it's the opposite. With a jet bike, you leave the line with maybe 55, 60 horsepower, and then you go about 50, 80 feet, you now have 100 horsepower, and another 50 feet, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, and it just keeps multiplying until it gets ridiculous. >> NARRATOR: Top speed? Nobody knows. On a short airport runway, the Y2K was clocked at 237 miles an hour. Given a longer straightaway-- take a guess. All that power without the mechanical chatter of a gas engine. >> LENO: It's dead smooth. I mean, it is dead smooth. You put your hand on the tank while it's running, if it wasn't for the<i> shrieking</i> noise, you wouldn't realize it was running at all, it's that smooth, that's what jets do. >> NARRATOR: The only downside to the jet engine is that there's a one to two second lag between throttle action and power delivery. >> LENO: And you've got that turbo lag on both ends. So if you're going down the road and you shut off, you don't really shut off, you have another second and a half of pulling really hard. >> NARRATOR: If you don't mind trading a little turbo lag for jet-power, this may be your next bike. That is, if you can handle the price tag-- $185,000. The Y2K comes from Marine Turbine Technologies of Franklin, Louisiana, which also makes jet-trucks and jet-boats. As for explaining the Y2K to your neighbors-- good luck. >> LENO: It's one of those things, if you have to explain it it's like describing sex to an alien. "You see the man and the woman..." You either get this or you don't. It's one of those things if you have to explain it, it's probably lost. >> NARRATOR: Unorthodox engine and unholy power aside, the Y2K works and looks like a sportbike. We can agree that it's somewhere in the motorcycle family. But consider the Boss Hoss. Is this Chevy V-8 powered machine a motorcycle or two- wheeled muscle car? One thing's for sure-- it's a guaranteed traffic-stopper. >> EDDIE PAUL: Well, you get a lot of attention. You usually don't see it 'cause you passed them. People tell you about it later, said you go down the street and everybody looked at it. >> NARRATOR: Eddie Paul builds extreme machines for Hollywood. Choppers for the movie<i> Mask</i> and <i>Streets of Fire.</i> Street racers for the sequel to<i> The Fast and the Furious.</i> His motorcycle of choice is the V-8 powered Boss Hoss. >> PAUL: The first idea I had was I wanted to build a V-8 motorcycle. Then somebody came up and showed me an article in<i> Popular</i> <i>Mechanics</i> and said, "Somebody beat you to it." And after looking at their bike I thought, "There's no way I can improve on it." So we got two of them. >> NARRATOR: Boss Hoss of Dyersburg, Tennessee, has been turning out road bikes since 1999. There are currently about 2,000 Boss Hosses on the highway. It weighs in at 1,100 pounds. There's a two-speed automatic transmission and a 350 cubic inch Chevy small block putting out 355 horsepower. If you like burnouts, this is your bike. As if that isn't enough, there's a "Stud Hoss" version with a 502 cubic inch big block. It'll cost you $39,200. Owners like Eddie Paul report that the Boss Hoss is a carefully crafted, reliable ride. In a word, it's a motorcycle. But what classification of vehicle is this? For decades, it was the Loch Ness monster of motorcycles. Nothing to prove it was real but a handful of sightings and a single photograph. >> BUZZ WALNECK: Disbelief. I thought it was just a, a prank that somebody had gotten a bunch of old parts together and made something to stage a photo. >> NARRATOR: Still, publisher and collector Buzz Walneck set out to determine whether the monster was real. He ran an ad in his own magazine. >> WALNECK: And it was about two weeks later, the phone rang and Helen says, "Buzz, the hair on the back of your neck is going to stand up, because somebody called and they know where it's at." >> NARRATOR: Amazingly, Walneck learned that there were not one but two of the bikes-- the one in the photograph and this one, a later copy, which he added to his collection. >> WALNECK: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. It looked like a brand-new Indian, it looked like a brand- new Harley. >> NARRATOR: "Roadog", the bikes were called by their builder, William "Wild Bill" Gelbke. >> WALNECK: I'd heard that he put on about 20,000 miles in one year on the Roadog, just traveling the country. Get on the road and ride. >> NARRATOR: That Roadog, the original, is now owned by Anthony Shablak of Green Bay, Wisconsin. (<i> engine starts</i> ) (<i> engine starts</i> ) >> NARRATOR: Roadog weighs 3,280 pounds and is powered by a 1961 four-cylinder Chevy "Iron Duke" engine. You can't just lean a 1½ ton bike on a kickstand. Wild Bill's solution was to place hydraulic rams at the four corners of the machine. The frame is a piece of industrial art, welded from aircraft tubing. >> WALNECK: One piece of pipe that's been turned and twisted and bent, bent outward, curved up, comes around, goes and comes around all the way to the bottom. >> NARRATOR: The beer cans are also standard equipment. They keep rocks and debris out of the hollow fork tubes. And what's it like to ride Roadog? It's now all but retired from the street, due in part to an ill-fated road test by motorcycle journalist John Burns. >> BURNS: Most bikes you kind of start off and get your balance and you might dab with your foot a couple of times. But that one, if you dab with your foot, it'll break off your leg. So you just kind of have to twist the throttle and pick up your feet at the same time and just go. Which is fine as long as you don't have to turn or anything. >> NARRATOR: And sure enough, when Burns tried to turn, Roadog crashed. >> WALNECK: John was fine. We were able to push and pull and get the bike out of the mud, and no real damage was done, but the day of testing was over and not really much was said on the way home. >> BURNS: He said, "Thanks for coming, John," and I said, "Thanks for letting me ride the Roadog, Buzz." And got on the airplane as fast as I could and got back out of there. >> NARRATOR: Only one man seemed to be able to ride Roadog-- its late creator. In 1978, Wild Bill Gelbke was gunned down by police after allegedly shooting at an officer. So, it's unridable and it's cobbled together from car parts. Is it a motorcycle? Perhaps not, except in the sense that it's a maverick machine built by a garage tinkerer. This trait is something that runs through the history of motorcycling, from William Harley to Soichiro Honda.Among , eccentric and historic machines at the Guggenheim Museum's recent motorcycle exhibit was this spindly two-wheeler dating from 1868. >> ULTAN GUILFOYLE: When I was researching the Art of the Motorcycle, it was important to me that I found the first motorcycle. Michaux, a bicycle maker, Perrault, an engineer, and they designed and patented the very first motorcycle. It still exists. We found it, and we put it in the exhibition. >> NARRATOR: Like all motorcycles it's a time machine, taking us back to 1860s France. The "velocipede," or pedal bicycle, had been invented in 1861. It quickly became all the rage of the French aristocracy, who were, perhaps, the first celebrity bikers. For the wildly popular sport of bicycle racing, a fast-pace machine was needed, and so Pierre Michaux fitted a small industrial steam engine into one of his velocipedes. At full steam, the contraption was good for about 19 miles an hour. But while the bicycle is an obvious progenitor of the motorcycle, there are others... one of which isn't a machine at all. >> DAVID EDWARDS: In very simple terms, a motorcycle is a mechanical horse. >> NARRATOR: The kinship between biker and horsemen is bred into the machine. It's most apparent in the way that particular riding positions have carried over from horse to motorcycle. >> GUILFOYLE: Americans have Western saddles. They stick their feet forward, and they don't use their feet very much for commands. In Europe, it's completely different. You ride your horses in what's called an "English saddle," and so you're very much upright and with your heels underneath you, because you use your feet a lot more to command the horse. >> NARRATOR: On an American cruiser, the rider is feet forward, in a classic cowboy slouch. The European or Japanese sportbike rider is in a racing tuck, like a jockey. Geography also had a hand in the design of motorcycles. For the twisting lanes of Europe, there was a premium on light weight and sure handling. But the broad landscapes of America fathered the Harley- Davidson and the Indian Chief-- highway cruisers with large displacement, low revving engines. >> PETER EGANL: I've tried to explain that a few times to English friends of mine. They say, you know, "Why are Harleys the way they are? Why aren't they sportier?" American bikes were really built to take people across big, open spaces without causing too much trouble. The English built very sporting, smaller, lighter bikes that were fun on the roads of England. >> NARRATOR: By the turn of the 20th century, in America, the machine with the bicycle lineage and cowboy attitude was the hottest thing on the road... or what passed for the road. >> EDWARDS: There were cart tracks, horse tracks, goat paths, and a motorcycle traversed those "roads" better than any four-wheel car. A motorcycle is also more powerful because it had less weight to carry. And there were big contracts for police, postal carriers, linemen. They all used motorcycles because they could get to where they needed to go. Cars got stuck. Cars were more unreliable mainly because they had four times as many parts as the average motorcycle. >> NARRATOR: America's first production motorcycle came out in 1902. The so-called "Camelback Indian," co-invented by Oscar Hedstrom, went places no other vehicle could. >> ALLAN GIRDLER: There was this famous hill; up comes Oscar riding this thing, and he just zooms up this hill. And then he comes back down and goes up halfway. He stops, he starts, and he takes off again up the hill. And the press had never seen anything like this. And Indian was made in a day. >> NARRATOR: While the Camelback proved a bike could climb, Glenn Curtiss showed it could go flat- out fast. In 1907, the then unknown tinkerer shoehorned a V-8 dirigible motor into a handmade frame... and sent the rickety machine loose on the sand flats at Daytona. >> GIRDLER: And they clocked him at 136 miles an hour. And you look at this thing-- it has, you know, tires like your thumb; no suspension, no brakes. And here is this boy inventor, climbing on this thing and going 136 miles an hour. >> NARRATOR: No vehicle of any kind would surpass his speed record until 1911. Curtiss went on to build a production V-twin motorcycle. And later, of course, he made aviation history with the Curtiss Jenny. For spectacle of speed, however, there was nothing like board- track racing. This rare film gives a glimpse into a the extreme sport of its day. Most race bikes of the time were pedal-started, but board- trackers were geared so high, for top speed, that they had to be towed to start. They had no throttles. Once up to speed, the bikes ran wide open at upwards of 120 miles an hour around a steeply banked wooden track. No brakes either. You slowed down by hitting a kill switch or by throwing your machine into a controlled skid. Just how dangerous all this was became clear on September 8, 1912. Newark, New Jersey. This picture was taken just before it happened. An instant later, the lead rider, Eddie Hasha, lost control. A period diagram shows the path of the bike as it slammed into the guardrail, killing four spectators, then ricocheted back onto the track, killing a rider. Board-track champion Hasha also died. The horrific accident made headlines-- the first time that motorcycles were featured on the front page of the<i> New York</i> <i>Times.</i> The next year, the motorcycle was lampooned in<i> Collier's</i> magazine. "Don't you know you can get the same sensations by tying firecrackers to your legs and sitting over an oil heater?" the cartoon read. As for the workings of those controls and gauges, which have always baffled non-bikers, <i>Collier's</i> said, "You... brake with your right hand, work the clutch with your left, and keep track of your oil and gasoline and electricity with the rest of your hands." But by then, the real argument against motorcycles had appeared-- in the form of the Tin Lizzy. Henry Ford's Model T had first appeared in 1909. Soon, you could drive a car on a motorcycle budget. By 1915, some two million people had opted for four wheels. And finally, there was good news about those bad old roads. >> EDWARDS: They'd learned how to build cement roadways. So both the infrastructure and the car got better and cheaper, and that really relegated motorcycles to sort of recreation and even luxury status. >> NARRATOR: It brought ruin to the motorcycle industry. In 1910, there had been about 150 companies making bikes in America. Almost all of them were put out business by the Model T. Yet, in a sense, the motorcycle had been liberated. They didn't need to be all that practical anymore. Once you might have chosen a bike for cheap transportation, but now you rode it... just because. >> GUILFOYLE: The thrill of speed and the thrill of the speed of the motorcycle has to do with the fact that the wind is in your face. >> EDWARDS: You are not<i> in</i> a motorcycle; you are<i> on</i> a motorcycle. You are not going<i> through</i> the countryside; you are<i> in</i> the countryside. When it rains, you get wet. When it's sunny, you get warm. When there's somebody cutting grass, you smell that. In a motorcycle, you are moving across a nation, and you feel like it. >> NARRATOR: The cowboy connection again. Some people just crave the freedom of the saddle. But back in the 1920s, if you chose to ride, your choices continued to dwindle. During the '20s, Excelsior- Henderson was one of the big three American motorcycle companies. The Super X and its oversized springer front suspension was a favorite of racers and the police... until the Great Depression came along. >> EDWARDS: The most direct effect, immediate effect, was that Excelsior-Henderson went out of business. That was owned by Mr. Schwinn, of Schwinn bicycle fame, and he looked at the tea leaves, the financial tea leaves, and he called a meeting and he said, "Gentleman, today we stop production." >> NARRATOR: With Excelsior- Henderson out of the picture, there were only two companies left. In the long run, there would be room for only one. Harley-Davidson and Indian. In the motorcycle world, they were Coke and Pepsi... Yankees and Dodgers... Hatfields and McCoys. The rivalry launched a thousand tattoos, and at least one poem. >> ALLAN GIRDLER: "You'll never wear out the Indian Scout. Or its brother, the Indian Chief. They're built like rocks to take hard knocks. It's the Harleys that cause the grief." >> NARRATOR: And the reply from the Harley faithful? "Says you." >> PETER EGAN: The fellow downstairs had a Harley- Davidson. And one day I said to him, "What kind of a motorcycle is that?" He said, "It's a Harley- Davidson." And then he sort of grabbed me by the shirt, and he pulled me right up close, and he said, "Don't ever buy an Indian." >> NARRATOR: But if two old motorcycle companies commanded such loyalty, why did one fail dismally, and the other become a runaway American success story? And why did one of the loveliest designs of the 20th century disappear from the American highway? Wasn't there enough room in America for both Harley and Indian? >> GIRDLER: These two makes became the rivals. They were rivals in racing. They were rivals in sales. Now, as it happened, the actual founding fathers were not enemies. >> NARRATOR: In those less culturally sensitive times, the founders of Indian were called the "Big Chief" and the "Medicine Man." "Big Chief" George Hendee was a former champion bicycle racer. "Medicine Man" Oscar Hedstrom was a whiz at engine design. Between 1902 and 1914, Hendee and Hedstrom built the world's biggest motorcycle company in Springfield, Massachusetts. >> GIRDLER: Indian was the innovator. Indian set some speed records in America, and the Europeans, as they usually do, laughed. And so they sent a couple of Indians over to England, and they finished one-two in the Isle of Man races. >> NARRATOR: A distant second, in sales, was the Harley- Davidson Motor Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company began producing a reliable single-cylinder bike in 1903. But it wasn't until 1909 that they really hit their stride with the 45-degree V-Twin. >> DAVID EDWARDS: You can look at that bike today and you can see in 2002 where that bike has come. There's a direct lineage between that V-Twin and the V-Twins of today. >> NARRATOR: But then, the nature of the rivalry abruptly changed, due in part to another tragedy at the motordrome. In 1912, top Indian rider Jake Derosier was gravely injured on the board track. After that, it's said, Oscar Hedstrom lost his taste for motorcycling. The day of Derosier's funeral, Hedstrom retired from Indian. "Big Chief" George Hendee soon followed. The rivalry was now between a corporation, Indian, and a family business, Harley- Davidson. During the 1920s, Harley and Indian matched each other bike for bike. But the companies were worlds apart. Harley-Davidson was driven by a hard-nosed business ethic. Indian was hobbled by mismanagement in the boardroom, pilferage on the factory floor. >> GIRDLER: They were stealing the plant blind. There were guys just carrying stuff off from the plant. In the Indian plant in Springfield. The company's in big trouble. So E. Paul comes in here and buys control of Indian. >> NARRATOR: E. Paul Dupont bought Indian in 1929. Heir to the Dupont paint dynasty, he was also a motorcycle enthusiast. For the first time in over a decade, Indian was run by a gentleman biker. >> EDWARDS: He brought a motorcycle ethic to the company and he knew how to run companies. The files are full of handwritten notes that he wrote to the engineers. You know, "Rode the new Scout, not happy with the powerband, the brakes," the whatever. "What can we do?" >> NARRATOR: Indian was back, though now in second place. And Harley was developing the machine that would keep them there. By 1936, it was ready-- the E-L model with the art deco lines and two-fisted rocker boxes on the engine... which was soon to be known as "The Knucklehead." The real innovation was above those knuckles. Older Harley and Indian engines were called flatheads, or side valves, because the valves were beside the piston. Rotating the valves to a position over the piston heads allows for higher compression and better engine breathing. >> EDWARDS: And breathing in an engine is the key to making horsepower. The more it breathes, the more gas and air you can put in, the more power it makes. >> NARRATOR: For the first time in the long rivalry, Indian had no comparable bike. But there was life in the old company yet. In 1940, Indian unveiled a motorcycling classic. It came from the school of streamlined design. Streamlining was the art of making objects look fast while they were standing still. For the 1940 model year, Indian designer Briggs Weaver achieved the effect on a motorcycle. >> EDWARDS: Probably the single most distinctive shape in motorcycling. Starting out with the front fender, the fully valanced fender, the Indian Chief running light, the chrome moto-lamp headlight, it just sort of set the whole streamlined tone for the rest of the bike. And then you've got this sort of teardrop-shaped flowing rear fender that complements the front fender. It really is to many people's eyes probably the best-looking of the Indian Chiefs. >> NARRATOR: Yet to many bikers of the day, that gorgeous sheet metal was just excess baggage. >> EGAN: Any Indian restorer will tell you that thousands of them were thrown away and stacked up behind Indian dealerships. And mechanics who worked on them at the time were constantly taking them off and throwing them away. >> NARRATOR: But the coming of World War II soon halted production of all civilian vehicles. The rivalry was now for military contracts. For the Army, Harley-Davidson developed a 750cc V-Twin. Indian came up with a 500cc bike-- not exactly a fair fight. >> EDWARDS: The Army called for a 500cc bike, Harley built the 750. Indian played by the rules and built a 500cc bike that was pretty underpowered compared to the Harley. So Harley came out of the war in better shape than Indian. >> NARRATOR: Harley had produced 88,000 military bikes. Indian, fewer than 40,000. Yet after the war, Indian made one last daring play to steal Harley's thunder. E. Paul Dupont left Indian in 1945. He was succeeded by 36-year-old Ralph Rogers... a man with a vision to revolutionize American motorcycling. Right after the war, everybody wanted wheels. If you couldn't get a car, you wanted a bike. Problem was, as Rogers thought, you might be intimidated by one of the old-fashioned road-burners. >> EDWARDS: He was not swayed by the romance of the big road- going Chief. He realized that these were old designs that had their roots in the '20s and '30s. >> NARRATOR: In 1949, Indian introduced the motorcycle line intended to put every American on two wheels. There was a single-cylinder Indian Arrow, and a redesigned Scout with a British-style vertical twin engine. The new Indians were hyped by the celebrities of the day. Cary Grant, Robert Ryan and football star Bobby Waterfield and wife Jane Russell, took photo ops aboard the new Indians. The marketing might have been sound, but the bikes were not. They were badly under- engineered, and plagued by electrical failures. The new model line sat in mostly empty showrooms. >> GIRDLER: And the dealers came in begging, threatening. I'm told they had to be locked, they had to lock the boardroom because those guys were out there beating on the door, saying, "Bring us the motorcycles we can sell." >> NARRATOR: Indian shut down the new model line in 1952. They continued making just one bike, the shapely but outdated Chief, until 1953. Then, the doors quietly closed on the old "Wigwam," as the Springfield factory was called. The building was demolished in 1984. Ralph Rogers has been vilified as the man who killed Indian. But his vision for the future of motorcycles was sound. >> GIRDLER: This was the idea ahead of its time, because what Rogers did in 1949 was exactly what Mr. Honda did in 1959. But of course, Honda's timing was better and Honda's product was indescribably better. >> NARRATOR: Indian's day was done. Harley-Davidson was in sole command of the field. But the old rivalry between Milwaukee and Springfield has never quite died... just ask a couple of partisan bikers, as Peter Egan did. >> EGAN: I said, "What was that Indian-Harley thing all about?" And the Indian guy said, he said, "Well, that's easy." He said, "Indian riders could read, and Harley owners were the scum of the earth." And... And of course, the Harley guy thought it was the other way around. Back in the '60s, two things were guaranteed to make your hands tremble on the steering wheel. One-- a motorcycle cop in your rear-view mirror. And two-- an outlaw biker on his chopped hog. And chances are both these riders would have saddled up on the same brand. >> GUILFOYLE: It's very interesting how Harley-Davidson strides both sides of an interesting cultural divide in America. On the one hand, you've got cops on Harleys. And on the other side, you've got the bad boys on Harleys. The Hell's Angels and so on. >> NARRATOR: Stranger yet, they might literally have ridden the same bike. >> JAMES: Since most of those bikes are probably bought at an auction, I wonder how many motor officers in the '60s, you know, have pulled over a guy that's riding a chopped-out bike that used to be theirs. That he used to bust people on. You know? (<i> laughs</i> ) >> NARRATOR: So, why did both policeman and bikers ride Harley-Davidson? And how could the same machine play the dual role of cop bike and chopper? This rare film was shot for <i>Easyriders Magazine</i> in 1978. It shows two original members of the notorious Boozefighters Motorcycle Club riding their Harleys from L.A. to Sturgis, South Dakota. The Boozefighters are credited with kick-starting the outlaw biker movement in 1947. But the outlaw heritage goes back even further. >> EDWARDS: The term "outlaw" has several derivations. One is that it was just outlaw racers. They did not want to race within the confines of the American Motorcycle Association. >> NARRATOR: Founded in 1924, the American Motorcycle Association was the official race sanctioning body. But what if your pride and joy didn't meet the AMA's criteria? >> EDWARDS: Either their bikes were too big, or they were the wrong types, and so they just formed their own race series, and they called it the "Outlaw Race Series." >> NARRATOR: This was one of the original outlaw machines-- a 1929 Harley-Davidson JD. In 1936, Harley itself had lobbied to have the two-cam JD excluded from competition. It was so fast that it threatened Harley's new Knuckleheads. Outlaw racers of the '30s were often called "Cutdowns." This was the first American custom-- a bike stripped down to bare bones. The end of World War II brought a turning point to the custom bike scene. Former G.I.s were buying up ex-Army Harleys and Indians, which could be had for as little as 50 bucks. But no one wanted to leave them in military trim. >> EDWARDS: Of course, they looked like Army surplus motorcycles. They were olive drab, they had these big fenders that kept the mud off. Well, they didn't want that, so they cut the fenders or "bobbed" the fenders, hence the name "bob job" or "bobber." >> NARRATOR: On a bob-job, the rear half of the back fender was bobbed-- or cut off-- to lose extra weight. The front fender was often just junked. The custom paint of the day was also a carry-over from the war. Death's heads, eight balls and pinup girls-- once painted on warplanes-- were tattooed on gas tanks. And who rode this new kind of custom? >> EDWARDS: These were a bunch of ex-servicemen that had some spare time, had a little money in their pockets, had this sort of bellowing, fearsome, you know, two-wheeled beast, and went out and, you know, raised a little hell. >> "WINO" WILLIE FORKNER: Everyone who was in the Boozefighters was a veteran. And we all come back with the same thing in mind. "Jesus, now we can kind of play and do hairy things, and nobody shooting at our ass." That made a hell of a difference in life, you know? (<i> laughs</i> ) When there's no bullets flying, by God, you can have a pretty good time. >> NARRATOR: Out for a good time-- that's all the Boozefighters claimed they were up to on July 4, 1947. The motorcycle club was in Hollister, California, for the annual AMA races. Barred from the official events, the bikers staged their own. >> FORKNER: The local fuzz blocked off the main drag there for a full block, so we could have drag races, burn circles, figure eights and all this kind of Wild West .... And then the ... State Highway come along. They don't know that the city cops blocked it off with the barricades on each end. They think we done it. >> NARRATOR: A rumor spread that the Boozefighters had taken over the town. And what seemed like photographic evidence wasn't long in coming. >> DON CAMERON:<i> Life Magazine</i> come down, and they got these fellas to pose for these wild pictures. And they connect it with the Boozefighters. And then when<i> Life Magazine</i> published it, it took off then. Nobody... You couldn't stop it. >> NARRATOR: The man posed on the bob-job wasn't even a biker. Yet motorcycling has never really recovered from the bad publicity. It didn't help that in 1954, Hollywood gave its take on what happened at Hollister. >> LANCE TIDWELL: They made the picture of<i> The Wild One.</i> It was taken after the Boozefighters. And, uh, of course, you know, Marlon Brando played the lead, and Lee Marvin was Wino Willie. And Wino was going to be a technical director, but he got drunk the night before, and so... >> CAMERON: So, he never made it. >> TIDWELL: So, he wasn't the technical director. (<i> laughs</i> ) >> CAMERON: Advisor. >> NARRATOR:<i> The Wild One</i> spawned countless other biker flicks. In the eyes of moviegoers, at least, many riders were real outlaws. On the opposite side of the law, motorcycles were also a symbol. In this case, of unbending authority. Harley-Davidson was the police motorcycle by default, ever since the demise of Indian in 1953. Not that it wasn't supremely adaptable for the job. >> SERGEANT RON HARRIS: It was very much suited at that time for police work. In terms that it afforded the most comfort, it afforded the most power, and it was the most adaptive to the needs of law enforcement. >> NARRATOR: While outlaw racers stripped their machines down, the police piled it on. A police bike had to carry a bulky two-way radio, mounted above the rear fender. Microphone and speaker were mounted on the left handlebar. The siren of those days was known as a "growler." >> HARRIS: This is one of the old-style mechanical sirens that was used in the '60s era on the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The principle was that this portion here rested on the rear tire of the motorcycle. And as the motorcycle went fast, it made a high-pitched siren sound. And as it went slower, it made a growling sound. Hence the nickname of this was called "The Growler." >> NARRATOR: The famous "look" of the motor officer was highly traditional, derived in large part from the mounted police. The tall, spit-shined boots are those of cavalry officers, as are the tucked-in riding breeches, tailored to the needs of the motorcycle cop. >> HARRIS: There's a lot of safety features built into this uniform, like the double thickness on the knees, on the pants, and the double thickness on the rear portion of the pants. All of that's for safety reasons. >> NARRATOR: Among policemen, there's a great deal of prestige in being a motor officer. They are the most visible officers on the road. In traffic, they are often the first on the scene of an accident or crime. Going by riding prowess and time in the saddle, the cop is the ultimate biker. And yes, his primary duty is to hand out tickets. >> HARRIS: A day in the life of a motor officer would consist of, um, writing a good number of tickets. So, it requires a lot of starting and stopping, accelerating and decelerating. It's a busy day in my opinion. >> NARRATOR: On the flip side of motorcycling, in the '60s, there was a new scene. Now, there were self-proclaimed outlaws on wheels-- the Hell's Angels and their many imitators. And what they rode was a radical new kind of custom. Mile-long forks. Sky-high handlebars. Earsplitting pipes. Eye-popping paint. The chopper. Each one of these machines was a personal expression of its owner. But though no two were exactly alike, there were some rules of engagement. Choppers were usually Harley-Davidsons and often had rigid rear ends. "Rigids" had no shock absorbers at the rear axle. It made for a kidney-jolting ride, but what bikers got in return was a feeling of being hardwired to their bikes. >> JAMES: I like that positive feel of a rigid where it's just, you know, you got to pay attention, and, you know, you're kind of one with the bike literally. >> NARRATOR: As for those exaggerated front forks-- so long they made the wheels look tiny by comparison-- they were yet another legacy of World War II. >> JAMES: I think this front end right here, which was an Harley-Davidson, like, military XA front end, which is a couple inches longer, so it made the bike sit up higher for better ground clearance. And I think that's probably what a lot of guys used to, you know, raise their bike up, and it gave it a little bit more radical look. To go even farther, guys used to take, you know, early Ford radius rods which had the same, you know, general shape, and they could hack these off and plug them right in there, and they'd make the front end, like, this long. >> NARRATOR: And once those forks started stretching out, all bets were off. >> JAMES: It's the typical American way, man. If three inches is good, then 20 inches is, like, way better, you know. "Jimmy's got a three-over front end. Well, screw him. I want a six-over. You know, and I want big giant bars, you know. There's no way Jimmy's going to have a better bike than me." >> NARRATOR: Bikers have one-upped each other ever since. This film, shot in the late '70s, shows an extreme moment in the evolution of choppers. By then, there were radically stepped seats... tall "sissy bars" for the passenger to kick back on... those high handlebars, called "apehangers"... and at the other extreme, short flat handlebars called "drag bars." Stretched gas tanks... wild paint jobs... and acres of gleaming chrome completed the outlaw ride. The chopper is one of the most enduring of custom styles. Cues from the '60s and '70s have found their way to modern Harley-Davidsons. And today, one of the most coveted rides of all is a West Coast Chopper by old-school builder Jesse James. >> JAMES: I like 'em to look like there's not enough parts there to make it run, you know. That a couple major components are missing. You know, they must be. "That bike can't even run." And people are standing around, like, having an argument whether it runs or not, and then I jump on it, do a big burnout, and they're gone. >> NARRATOR: Back in the '60s and '70s, while cops and bikers were loyal to their Harley- Davidsons, the motorcycle world was completely changing around them. You may not have known it if you just rode Harleys, but the '50s and '60s were a time of dizzying change. (<i> engine hums</i> ) The British came to visit. The Japanese came to stay. Scooters came and went... and it all began in 1948 with a man in a bathing suit and swim cap. American rider Rollie Free is seen here practicing for a record attempt on a British-made Vincent. The stomach-down riding position was optimal for minimizing wind resistance-- even though the rider couldn't see where he was going. But on September 13th, 1948, at the Bonneville salt flats, Free went even further. >> LENO: He went like 149.9, he just couldn't get faster than that, so he took off his leathers and his boots, stripped down to essentially his underwear-- a bathing suit-- and laid on the bike and broke 150. That gave him the aerodynamics he needed just to get over there. >> NARRATOR: In a chase car, a photographer captured the moment. >> EGAN:<i> Life</i> magazine printed that picture, and everybody in America instantly knew that there was this motorcycle from England called a Vincent that would go 150 miles an hour. >> EDWARDS: And that bike cemented the Vincent legend. It was the fastest bike in the world-- and certainly looked the part. >> NARRATOR: At a time when a stock Harley could do maybe 90 miles an hour, the honest 150 on a Vincent's speedometer was mind-blowing. >> MIKE PARTI: This was a rocket ship to the moon, virtually. 150 miles an hour, that was a magic number. >> NARRATOR: Vincents like this 1953 Black Shadow were elite, expensive machines... not so the other British motorcycles. The pound had been devalued after World War II, making British wheels relatively cheap. >> EDWARDS: The cry was "export or die." So that's where you got a lot of the sports cars, the Austin- Healys, the Bug-eyed Sprites, the Triumphs, and that's where you got a lot of the motorcycles. Triumph, Norton, BSA, Ariel, AJS-- I mean, the list goes on and on. (<i> engine roars</i> ) >> NARRATOR: Many of these bikes could do "the ton"-- as the British called the 100 mile-an- hour mark-- right out of the crate. And they were covered with metallic eye candy. >> EGAN: The British always had very good-looking components on their bikes. They had nice chrome. They had beautifully polished cases. They had a very nice aesthetic sense. >> NARRATOR: Throughout the '50s, the British had bragging rights on Main Street. After all, wasn't Marlon Brando in<i> The Wild One</i> riding a British-made Triumph? >> HOST: And here, a motorcycle races a hot rod. You asked for it. >> NARRATOR: For a television showdown between a hotrod and a motorcycle, a Triumph Thunderbird was chosen. >> HOST: Go! (<i> engines roar</i> ) >> NARRATOR: The Triumph won. The upstart British even got a rise out of a certain American motorcycle company. In 1957, the first Harley- Davidson Sportster appeared. The Sportster had a race-bred engine and a lightweight frame and a most un-Harley-like foot shift. >> GIRDLER: It's no coincidence that the original Sportsters had the foot shift on the right, the way the British bikes did. While the big twin Harley had the shift on the left. The Sportster was designed to meet the incoming competition. >> NARRATOR: Then along came the '60s, changing America's mind about a lot of things... including how to have fun on two wheels. >> Hey! >> It's... >> Vespa! (<i> mod music plays</i> ) >> NARRATOR: Vespa scooters-- the carefree little machines arrived on American shores in the early '60s. But this curvy Italian beauty had a not-so-innocent past. Throughout his dictatorship, Benito Mussolini had promoted bikes as a way to mobilize Italy. >> MELISSA PIERSON: Mussolini was very fond of motorcycles, and obviously for a good reason; Italy was a great production center. And he wanted to make his followers into a nation of motorized centaurs. >> NARRATOR: By war's end, in Italy, both Mussolini and his motorcycles were out of favor. But war-battered Italy was in need of cheap transportation. So Corradino d'Ascania designed a vehicle that wasn't quite a motorcycle. >> D'ASCANIA: I began by drawing a person sitting comfortably on a seat. I drew two wheels and handlebars above the front wheel. Automatically, it took shape. >> NARRATOR: D'Ascania's scooter came out in 1946. It was called "The Wasp." Or in Italian, "Vespa." With automatic transmissions and unintimidating power, Vespas were effortless to ride. And with all that swoopy sheet metal, they embodied sensual Italian design. A Vespa was a machine that tripped the light fantastic... just like Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in<i> Roman</i> <i>Holiday.</i> But... was it a motorcycle? The scooter's tiny wheels and step-through riding position separated it from the real bikes. And scooters don't have the long-standing, hard-core following that motorcycles do. Scooters are fashion, not passion. >> ANNOUNCER: Here's the ever- inspiring Angie Dickinson. Useless trying to tell me that it's the wasps that sit on flowers. No, it's the flowers that sit on the wasps. >> EDWARDS: It's a strange thing. They're practical; but they're also fashionable; and so they go in and out of fashion. (<i> engine hums</i> ) >> NARRATOR: In England, during the '60s, scooters and motorcycles didn't mix at all. It was the mods and the rockers. The scooter set versus the cycle cult. >> LENO: Well, the rockers were the more-- I guess, in American terms-- the Fonzie-type guys with the leather jackets and the faster bikes. The mods would be, oh, guys in scooters that were more fashion conscious. >> NARRATOR: The mod look is seen in a production still from the movie<i> Quadrophenia,</i> starring Sting. Mods wore suits. Their scooters were heavily decorated with ribbons and pop graffiti. And they occasionally came to blows with the leather-clad rockers. Rocker bikes were known as "cafe racers"-- homemade, street-going versions of road racers. Often, a cafe racer was a combination of two brands-- a so-called "Triton" was a Triumph engine in a Norton featherbed frame. The rarer "Norvin" had a Norton frame cradling the expensive Vincent engine. By mixing and matching parts, British bikers had created a new kind of motorcycle. >> EDWARDS: A cafe racer is really the world's first sportbike. Today's high-performance repli- racer sportbikes really started with the cafe racers. >> NARRATOR: The name "cafe racer" comes from the British ritual of racing from one transport cafe to the next. A typical run would be from the Ace Cafe of London to the Chelsea Bridge and back... ...through traffic, at speeds exceeding 100 miles an hour. >> EDWARDS: That was the big performance benchmark. You would start out at the Ace Cafe, you would drop your money in the juke box. And you'd get on your bike. And you'd try to get back before one of the longer songs of the era had played. And to do that, of course, you had to do "the ton." >> NARRATOR: Ton-up fast and loaded with charisma, Brit bikes dominated motorcycling. Yet by the early '60s in America, there was already a contender in sight. Of all things, it was an undersized bike from a country that-- at the time-- was synonymous with cheap goods. >> GARY CHRISTOPHER: To think that you could come here with a small machine of 50cc's and succeed seemed absurd to most people. >> NARRATOR: The man behind the machine was no stranger to failure. Soichiro Honda was a college dropout whose first career-- as race car driver-- ended in<i> this</i> crash. He eventually found success making small engines for mounting on bicycles. The first little Hondas helped to mobilize postwar Japan. By 1959, Honda was exporting his small-is-better philosophy to America... in the form of the Honda "Cub." >> NARRATOR: The feisty 50cc bike had a step-through riding position, like a scooter, but full-sized motorcycle wheels. It had electric start, automatic transmission and about seven horsepower-- all for about $195. >> CHRISTOPHER: And people started to realize what performance these little machines had; and they were built like a fine watch, and they were incredibly durable. They were fun to ride; they sipped fuel at an amazingly low rate; and so they slowly began to catch on. >> NARRATOR: What helped them catch on was a nearly irresistible ad campaign. >> GUILFOYLE: Bikers at that time were known as mad, bad and dangerous to know. Your mom didn't want you to associate with or be a biker. And so for Honda to be able to break that perception, they had to create this great advertising campaign, which said, "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." And the Honda you met them on was this little red and cream Honda 50. >> LENO: When I was a kid, the hottest selling motorcycle in the world was the Honda 50. I remember Honda came to this country and they told the dealers, "We want to sell 5,000 of these." And the dealers said, "You'll never sell 5,000 a year." They said, "No, no, we want to sell 5,000 a month." "Oh, it'll never happen." But they did; they sold millions of 'em. >> NARRATOR: The Cub was followed by other bikes... the 160cc Honda "Dream"... the 305 "Superhawk." The only thing missing from the Honda lineup was a big- displacement road-burner. In 1969, that changed. >> GUILFOYLE: I was walking through the exhibition in Las Vegas not so long ago, and we passed the CB750 Honda, the Honda Four. And I heard a guy just near me saying, "Ah... the bike that changed the world." And in many ways, the CB750<i> was</i> the bike that changed the world. >> NARRATOR: The inline four- cylinder engine was new for the street. The disc brakes were a motorcycling first. And the brawny styling was brand-new for Honda. >> CHRISTOPHER: And I got on it the first time and I looked down at the fuel tank and everything just seemed massive. And it just felt like it had just run a hole right through the wind. >> NARRATOR: What was the British response? If you met the nicest people on a Honda, you met a certain girl on a Norton. >> EDWARDS: The Norton girl was, you know, only probably the most well-remembered advertising campaign in all of motorcycle history. This was the late '60s, early '70s. And Norton hit upon the idea of putting a very beautiful, very British-looking "bird," as they would say back then, with their motorcycles in a full-page ad. >> NARRATOR: But if you looked past the girl to the motorcycle, you saw an increasingly dated machine-- a '60s street racer built with '40s technology. >> EDWARDS: And old-time Triumph and BSA buffs will tell you that the, the bikes of the '40s and '50s were very sweet- running and docile, and lasted well. And that, as they got into the '60s, they started becoming something they really weren't engineered to be, which was, you know, fire-breathing high- performance motorcycles. >> NARRATOR: The 1970s were hard times in general in England. The Labour Party and it's so- called "nanny state" put much of the work force on the dole... and spread apathy throughout business, including that of motorcycles. >> GIRDLER: The English blew it. You know, they did not improve their product enough and they didn't pay attention enough. >> NARRATOR: One by one during the '70s, the old English brands failed. The last holdout, Triumph, closed its doors in 1984. And even some who were steeped in the romance of British iron had to admit there was a new world order. >> EDWARDS: I felt sort of that I had been set free. That I'd, I loved the Norton, but I couldn't trust it. And when I sold it and got the Honda, all of a sudden, I felt that I could get out a map of the United States and look at it and go anywhere. >> NARRATOR: At the moment the Japanese were redefining the street bike in the '70s, a revolution was also taking place in the dirt. Motocross morphed into Supercross... and was then launched skyward into the freestyle era. It's often said that riding a motorcycle fast feels like flying, but one kind of riding isn't<i> like</i> flying-- it is flying. >> JEREMY McGRATH: I like riding street bikes, too, but you can't jump a street bike. I want to be up in the air. >> NARRATOR: But was a motorcycle really meant to do this? And how did we get from bouncing over a dirt track... to back-flips in midair? It began in the 1940s with a cross-country race Americans called a "scramble." >> 1940s ANNOUNCER: What's a motorcycle scramble? Oh, man, it's crazy. Take a bunch of cool cats on bouncing bikes, all for the fun. And if this is fun, son, I don't care if you take my share. >> NARRATOR: In the 1960s, America adopted European rules for the race, along with the name-- moto cross country, or just motocross. >> DAVID EDWARDS: "Moto" is their word for motorcycle and to basically save space in newspaper ads, "Moto cross country" became just "Moto-X." >> NARRATOR: Motocross rules dictated that a course should be irregular, so that both right and left turns are negotiated. Hills and jumps were included, not for show, but so that riders would be forced to change gears. Motocross races were normally held deep in the countryside, making it hard to attract large audiences to races. But if people wouldn't come to motocross, motocross would come to them. In the early '70s, promoters started building artificial courses in football stadiums. Motocross was a natural fit for a stadium, where finally, spectators could take in all the action. But, strictly speaking, a race on an artificial course was no longer motocross. What to call it? An exhibition staged in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1972 was called the "Superbowl of Motocross." The contraction, "Supercross," stuck. In the confines of the stadium, the style of racing changed. There wasn't space for much of a straightaway... but there was plenty of room to go vertical. >> McGRATH: Supercross is more about jumping. Motocross is more about going fast. Supercross is more of a spectacle. For the fan you can sit around the track, you can see all of the racing, there's big jumps, people like to show off. And sometimes the racing's a lot better, because it's more tight. Supercross is not just a race, it's an event. >> NARRATOR: While the races are different, the machines are basically the same. There are still two basic engine classifications, 125cc and 250cc. Tiny compared with street-bike engines, these mills are brutally effective for the job at hand. Dirt bikes traditionally have two-stroke engines. In a two-stroke, the up and down movement of the piston opens the exhaust port and intake port. Eliminating the need for the intake and exhaust strokes of the four-stroke engine. There's a power pulse at every revolution of the crankshaft, unlike the four-stroke engine, which produces power every two turns. And since it lacks the valves and camshaft of a four-stroke, the whole package is lighter. >> EDWARDS: A 250 two-stroke was many times faster, quicker and less tiring on the rider-- very important when you're racing 40 minutes-- than a big four-stroke. >> NARRATOR: And yet a two- stroke has a fatal flaw. It burns a mixture of oil and gas, called "premix." Burning oil produces large quantities of air pollution. The two-stroke engine is inherently dirtier than a four-stroke. Two-stroke engines have been unable to meet clean-air regulations since the mid-'80s, and are no longer used on street bikes. They may one day vanish from dirt bikes. 500cc four-stroke bikes, called "thumpers," have become competitive with 250 two- strokes. >> MIKE "THE GODFATHER" METZGER: The Japanese market for four- strokes is catching up with the lightness and the balance of a two-stroke, right now. Two, three years from now I think a four-stroke will be just as good as a two-stroke, if not better. >> NARRATOR: If motocross has the European racing pedigree, Supercross gave it a touch of American showbiz, but the true exhibitionists of the dirt were still waiting in the wings. The wild aerobatics of freestyle motocross actually came from bikes without a motor. BMX, or bicycle motocross competitions, began in the 1970s. Kids not old enough to drive were catching air on their bikes. Among them, future Supercross champion Jeremy McGrath. And midway through his record string of Supercross victories, McGrath decided to try something he'd learned in his BMX days... a stunt called a "Nac-Nac." >> McGRATH: I was a little nervous to test it out in the U.S., so at a European Supercross in Spain in 1994, I did my first Nac-Nac. It got quite big reviews, for sure. The people didn't know what to think of it. I know what my parents thought of it, they were freaked out for sure. >> NARRATOR: It became a ritual for McGrath and other riders to celebrate every win with a BMX- style stunt. All this showboating led to "expression sessions," held during the half time of Supercross meets. By 1998, freestyle motocross was a stand-alone sport. Filling up stadiums around the world, even a famous bullfight arena. >> METZGER: Plaza de Toro in Madrid, Spain, 25,000 people showed up to watch freestyle motocrossers entertain them. They told me that the biggest crowd they've ever had there was about 12,000 for a bullfight. >> NARRATOR: The freestyle repertoire includes the "Bar Hop," where the rider shoots his legs over the handlebars. "Seat-grab Indian Air" is two tricks in one. A seat-grab with a scissors- like motion of the legs, called "Indian Air." There's the "Superman." And a flying handstand called the "Hart Attack," the signature stunt of top freestyler Carey Hart. What freestylers would call the "gnarliest" trick is the back- flip. You're seeing the first time it was ever attempted in competition, by Carey Hart in 2000. What you can't quite see is Hart's crash landing. Later, Mike Metzger learned how to stick the landing. So what's it's like to launch yourself over backwards on a motorcycle? >> METZGER: For that split second, you can't see nothing, except you're just waiting for the ground to come around. It's like, "Okay, there's the ground. Time to land. That was fun. I want to do it again!" >> NARRATOR: And how dangerous is this? Mike "The Godfather" Metzger has broken both legs, lost eight teeth, suffered three broken backs, was badly scarred by a spinning tire... all before the age of 27. But that was when he was racing Supercross. Metzger believes freestyle is safe by comparison. >> METZGER: Right now, you know I'd really prefer to go out and do as many back-flips as I can, compared to going and racing with 20 guys on the starting gate. >> NARRATOR: From the heavy traffic of Supercross to one-on- one freestyling, it's little dirt bikes, big air. It's the naked machine. All its workings on display, designed and evolved to be seen as well as perform. >> DAVID EDWARDS: Most motorcycles, you look at it, you see the engine, you see the wheels, you see the brakes. In essence, the mechanicals are on display. Whereas most cars these days, even when you open the hood, you're hard-pressed to see anything mechanical. >> NARRATOR: That motorcycles are mechanical art of a high level is something bikers take for granted. But it took until the early '90s for the art establishment to catch on. >> ULTAN GUILFOYLE: About ten years ago Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, talked to me about making an exhibition of motorcycles. I laughed at the time. And then a couple of years later, he called me and he said, "I'm going to do this motorcycle exhibition as our end-of-century exhibition." >> NARRATOR: A few snickers were also heard from the cultural elite. >> EDWARDS: Among certain art circles there was a pooh-poohing of, you know, how can a motorcycle be artistic? How can a motorcycle be considered as worthy of being installed in the Guggenheim Museum? >> NARRATOR: The exhibit opened in June, 1998. Critics were won over by the display of the motorcycle as a 20th Century conduit for design, art and culture. And museum patrons voted with their feet. >> GUILFOYLE: The old phrase "a blockbuster" literally means that people line up around the block to try and get in. And this was a blockbuster for the Guggenheim. The end of the line would join the front of the line, virtually, right around a New York City block. >> NARRATOR: 110 motorcycles were on display, from the 1868 steam velocipede to modern sportbikes. How did a bike make the final cut? The official criteria said it had to have three things: aesthetic merit, technical innovation and social impact. Yet at least one bike, a replica of Peter Fonda's chopper from <i>Easy Rider,</i> made it on sheer notoriety. >> GUILFOYLE: The Captain America bike is a great example of how our criteria for selecting bikes applied and didn't apply at the same time. The Captain America bike is virtually devoid of any technical merit. It's a horrible thing to ride, but it is a wonderful thing to look at. What we saw was that people looked at these objects as they would a sculpture. You know, we had children pressing their noses up against the bikes. We had moms and pops poring over details that would be lost on me. Getting pleasure out of seeing the particular shape of an engine or a casting or a wheel or a tank, you know? And that was very exciting to see. >> NARRATOR: For the bikers in the crowd, this was vindication for all the years they spent in their garages admiring their cycles. >> EDWARDS: The Guggenheim, which is as famous a building as there is in the world, exhibited in this almost hallowed ground, this Frank Lloyd Wright structure that everybody in the world knows-- it really was a moment. >> ALLAN GIRDLER: So, here we have the motorcycle being recognized as art, which is wonderful. Plus, it drives all the snobs nuts, which is as much fun. >> NARRATOR: When the exhibit traveled to Bilbao, Spain, it opened with a celebrity biker run. Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Dennis Hopper and Lauren Hutton were among the motorcycle glitterati. The exhibition drew two million people at its runs in Europe and America. Still, it was just one indication of the new way that people had come to look at motorcycles. >> GUILFOYLE: The exhibition "The Art Of The Motorcycle" was successful on its own terms. But what was really fascinating to me was that it did capture a particular moment in the popular thinking about motorcycles. And motorcycles now, in America, are considered to be a desirable object. And that's the first time that that's been the case universally. >> NARRATOR: Could it be that the outlaw machine was becoming respectable? If this seemed farfetched, the brand that spearheaded the change seemed even more unlikely. The 1970s had been hard times for Harley-Davidson and its line of heavyweight motorcycles. >> LENO: There wasn't a lot of competition in that class, so they just made the same bike over and over again. "New hand grip for '74!" You know, I mean, those were the kind of improvements that you had. They didn't get any better, and consequently they lost market share because they kept making the same thing over and over again. >> NARRATOR: Harley was a family business no more. In 1969, the motor company had been sold to AMF, the bowling equipment company. AMF tried to match the flood of Japanese imports by pumping up production. But more bikes turned out to mean less quality. If you bought an AMF Harley, you might find yourself pushing it rather than riding. In 1981, a group of Harley executives, including a grandson of one of the founders, Willie G. Davidson, bought the struggling company from AMF. But the technological seed of Harley's turnaround was already germinating. >> EDWARDS: Under AMF's guidance and leadership, the new Evolution motor was started. They green-lighted the project. They knew enough to know that the product had to improve. >> NARRATOR: The Evolution engine, shown here in the Sportster version, looked like the classic Harley V-Twin, but the engineering was all new. The top end was fabricated with aluminum rather than iron. Tolerances were closer, cooling action improved. >> PETER EGAN: A friend of mine who was a Harley dealer said that essentially they went from a 29,000-mile engine to a 100,000-mile engine overnight, in terms of its service life without needing any real work. >> GIRDLER: So, here's the Harley, and it looks like your grandfather's motorcycle. But it's got electric start. It's got good brakes. It's going to start every time. It's a wonderful piece of engineering. >> NARRATOR: And suddenly, every guy of a certain age seemed to want a Harley. If you looked closely enough, it was the same generation that fueled the bike boom of the 1960s. Schooled on Hondas, they graduated to Harleys. >> EDWARDS: Maybe they rode bikes when they were teenagers. But they put that aside to concentrate on the career track and the family. And when that was taken care of, they thought they deserved a little fun. That word "fun" underscores almost everything in motorcycling. Any big boom in motorcycling, the word "fun" is somewhere in, in that equation. >> NARRATOR: And this time around, there was no mom and dad to read the riot act about motorcycles. >> GUILFOYLE: For many people now it is a wonderful irony that they are able to buy the bike that their parents wouldn't let them have. And that's very liberating. >> NARRATOR: There's one bike that even your mom might approve of, so it might surprise you to learn of its hooligan past. It has long been true that the next big thing in motorcycling may come from the street, rather than the factory. The cafe racer came out of a London biker hangout. The chopper from some nameless garage. It even happened to Honda's flagship touring machine, the Gold Wing. >> GUILFOYLE: The Gold Wing is a very interesting motorcycle, because it started out as one thing and has turned into another. >> CHRISTOPHER: In its original iteration, the Gold Wing was seen by the folks at Honda as being a big muscle bike, a big performance bike. >> NARRATOR: The 1975 Gold Wing was a bare-bones bike-- no plastic bodywork, just a massive mill in a stout frame. But its smooth-running, liquid- cooled four cylinder engine turned out to be perfect for the long haul. Almost from the get-go, Gold Wing owners loaded them up with touring essentials. >> EDWARDS: They put their own fairings up front. You could buy aftermarket fairings, handlebar-mount fairings. They put their own saddlebags on. Uh, They put their own tour trunks on. They fitted it with radios. They fitted it with crude cruise controls. >> NARRATOR: A few short years after the Gold Wing's introduction, Honda realized that their customers had redesigned their motorcycle. >> CHRISTOPHER: And basically, we simply followed the customer's direction. And the machines began to evolve, we began to offer fairings and bags and some of these touring accessories and equipment as well. And then by the early 1980s, we began to make the whole package. >> NARRATOR: The 1980 Interstate was the first fully-loaded Gold wing. The Gold Wing was gradually upsized and loaded with accessories, all the way until 2001, when Honda offered a sporty, streamlined version. And so the Wing's muscle-bike roots finally caught up with its reputation for luxury touring. >> EDWARDS: The new Gold Wing, they should have called it the Sport Wing, because it really is an amazing motorcycle. >> BURNS: The thing will fly around corners like a sportbike, stop really good, accelerate really hard, and, uh, has a stereo and cup holders and cruise control at the same time. The only kind of bike I can get my wife on the back of is like a Gold Wing 'cause she can doze off back there. >> NARRATOR: If the Gold Wing was reinvented in the garage, the single most stunning bike of the 1990s had an even more surprising origin. GUILFOYLE: One man, John Britten, working in New Zealand-- which has no history of motorcycling, incidentally-- created, with his own hands, a motorcycle that was not only a thing of incredible beauty with its lipstick-pink and powder- blue color scheme, and those beautiful organic, aerodynamic shapes and an amazing engine, but it also went like the wind. >> NARRATOR: This is the Britten V-1000-- a bike whose performance and sinuous lines are clouded only by personal tragedy. John Britten was both an engineer and artist, who had designed a successful line of original glass art. But his true passion was motorcycle racing. In 1990, Britten began building his own race bike from the ground up, engine and all, wrapping it in the liquid lines of a glass artist. In 1994, Britten took his V-1000 to Daytona. >> EDWARDS: And I immediately tracked him down and said, "We must have this motorcycle on the cover of<i> Cycle World Magazine."</i> To my mind, that Britten V-1000 was the most innovative motorcycle that has come down the pike in many, many years. Maybe ever. >> NARRATOR: The most innovative feature of Britten's bike was the frame-- or lack thereof. Instead of the usual steel or aluminum backbone, Britten used the engine block as the frame. Tank, wheels and all were connected to the engine by organically-shaped carbon fiber and Kevlar pieces. The V-1000 was beginning to win on the International Race Circuit, when in 1995, Britten died of malignant melanoma. He was 45. >> GUILFOYLE: He was a man who was lost to motorcycling forever after. But that one moment, the Britten V-1000, seems to me to capture all of the qualities that we love about motorcycling. The personal endeavor, the beauty, the pure beauty, and the exhilarating performance. >> NARRATOR: Fortunately, John Britten had no lack of company when it came to rethinking the motorcycle. >> ERIK BUELL: We really started with the concept of, "I want to make the sportbike chassis take a leap forward. I'm not satisfied where everything is today." >> NARRATOR: Former Harley- Davidson engineer, Erik Buell, left the motor company in 1983 to build race bikes. In 1987, he began building sportbikes using Harley- Davidson Sportster engines. >> BUELL: It is much like, you know, the Chevy V-8 or the Fender Stratocaster of the music industry. The one that everybody keeps making copies of. >> NARRATOR: In 2002, Buell started from scratch with a new V-Twin engine and a revolutionary frame. >> EDWARDS: One of the duties of the frame is to carry the gas tank. The gas tank sits atop the frame, usually. Well, Erik said, "Why don't we make the frame the gas tank?" Brilliant. >> BUELL: On this motorcycle, this is the air box cover, the fuel is all inside this massive aluminum frame here. Fills through here and goes down both sides of the frame and across the back. >> NARRATOR: Buell also eliminated the typical oil tank. >> BUELL: We came up with the idea of putting the oil right in the very front of the swingarm. The swingarm is an aluminum casting which dissipates heat really well and there's a lot of cool air flowing by it, gives us a lot of volume and a great location, and it takes the weight away of a separate tank. >> NARRATOR: With no separate oil and fuel tanks, the Firebolt is shorter and lighter. And with all the heavy liquids inside-- not on top of the frame-- there's a lower center of gravity, riveting the bike to the road. You can find the Firebolt and other Buells at Harley-Davidson dealerships. Since 1998, Harley has controlled the majority share of the Buell Motor Company. Another machine has gone even further in rejiggering the traditional geometry of two wheels. This is the Segway. Instead of the usual bicycle- style inline wheels, they're side by side, as on a handcart. Not only that, all the usual controls are absent. Riding the Segway is completely intuitive. >> DEAN KAMEN: If you want to go forward, you lean forward. You want to go backward, you lean backward. There's no brakes, there's no throttle. To turn to the left, you rotate the handle to the left. To turn to the right, you rotate the handle to the right. That's all there is to it. >> NARRATOR: But as top speed is only 12 miles an hour, nobody's calling the Segway a motorcycle... at least not yet. >> EDWARDS: What starts out as a utilitarian device, like the Segway, you know, we're Americans, and we'll hot-rod anything. I could certainly see the day where, um, you know, maybe there's Segway racing or Segway trials. >> NARRATOR: And so some things haven't changed since the beginning of motorized two- wheeling. They've been bobbed and hot- rodded. Bred in the race pits. Battle-tested in the dirt. And pieced together from basket cases in a thousand garages. >> JAMES: I'm only thinking about the one I'm working on right now-- this one. That's the one I care about right now. >> NARRATOR: And at the moment it seems locked in place... someone pulls off another stunning variation on the theme of two wheels and a motor. >> GUILFOYLE: The fact that it only is two wheels and an engine in the middle, you've got to make the best of a very simple shape. And that brings out the best in designers. >> NARRATOR: More than just a machine, it's a symbol of a deep divide in the way we go places. There have always been riders and drivers. Those who need the comfort and safety of the coach, and those who crave the freedom of the saddle. >> EGAN: You see it one day, and you say, "That's for me." And there's, uh, it's one of the mysteries of the human race that we-we don't know why that happens. But it certainly hits some of us real hard. >> LENO: I don't necessarily want to know what it is. I-I just know that it works and I enjoy it and-and I like having a bit of the mystery. >> NARRATOR: And now, throttle back, let that charismatic, enigmatic machine cool off. Maybe even get take a breather yourself, and dream about your next ride. <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by <font color="#00FFFF"> Media Access Group at WGBH</font> access.wgbh.org
