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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/726231
VOL. 53 ISSUE 36 SEPTEMBER 13, 2016 P135 spite of being at a disadvantage on the longer access road, Walt keeps the Harley alongside the leading Indian and the other racing machines. At the last second Walt smashes through a fence before the finish line to get on the track and wins the race. The big national "enduro" race (they were actually called endurance races in that era) in the Catskills proves to be more hand-to-hand combat between Walt and Indian's rider than a race. Walt crashes and is injured. That only serves to make Walt mad and he remounted and catches up with Indian rider and kicks him off into the woods, smashing his bike. The victory for Harley was sup- posed to get dozens of dealers to sign up, but when Walt gets into a brawl with the crew from Indian (including the guy in Indian headdress) the dealers get cold feet. Once again, all of this is very entertaining, but pure fiction. There are a lot of fisticuffs in the miniseries, even the three Davidson brothers get into a dust-up before Mama Davidson comes enters the room and offers to bonk some heads together herself unless the boys settle down. Episode one of the series ends with the board track era and the death of Eddie Hasha. This time the produc- ers decided to downplay the horrific board track crash that ended his life and that of fellow racer Johnny Albright and six spectators, including three young boys. The series shows Harley-Davidson withdrawing from board track racing after Hasha's death and focusing on flat track racing, but the reality is that Hasha's accident happened in 1912 and the Harley-Davidson continued racing and winning board track races into the mid-1910s and beyond. Episode two emphasizes the racing success Harley- Davidson had in the 1910s and '20s with Shrimp Burns, Ray Weishaar and Otto Walker, the original Harley Wreck- ing Crew. Burns is portrayed as a flamboyant and rapidly rising star, barely old enough to race, who joined the team only to be later stolen away by Indian. That part was true. With the onset of World War I much of the manufactur- ing capacity of the industry was put towards the war. In one scene Art and Walt Davidson and the new president of Indian, a fictional character named Randall James, and his assistant, appear together in a meeting with a military procurement officer and he tells the group that the gov- ernment expects 25,000 units from Indian and 15,000 from Harley. Art comes prepared with a much better pro- posal for the military and the officer changes the order to 20,000 each. Again, sheer fiction. The fact is Indian supplied a total of 41,000 machines to the military effort during WWI, while Harley provided 15,000. The second episode ends with a patent infringement lawsuit against Harley-Davidson instigated by Indian. The lawsuit threatens to bankrupt Harley, but unbeliev- ably the episode ends with the suit unresolved and it's never taken up again in the next chapter. While the first two episodes were entertaining, albeit highly dramatized, the series really went off the rails in the Episode three. In this final installment we are to believe that hooligan racing got its start in the 1930s and these outlaw races were open to blacks and women riders and that Harley-Davidson supported these non- sanctioned events. And we are further led to believe that when Bill Harley makes his last great engine design, the founders decide to debut the bike at one of these hooligan races instead of at an AMA National. Pure bunk. The series throws the AMA under the bus in a big way. Another totally made up character named Wharton, a Boss Hog type who is the chairman of the AMA. It seems Wharton's sole goal in life is to stop these outlaw races and to keep black riders from competing. In easily the most laughable scene in the series Wharton comes charging down the hill at an outlaw race looking like the cavalry, police in tow, ready to arrest all those participating. But alas, there's Walt Davidson himself there to watch his son Walt Jr. race and the cops back down when they realize they're dealing with the head of Harley-Davidson. How they could shoot this ridiculous scene with a straight face is unbelievable. The series was entertaining, especially in the first two episodes, but again for the producers of the show to present this series as based on true stories shows they simply didn't know the real stories, or felt they weren't dramatic enough. The ironic thing is that Harley-Davidson's real story is one of the most compelling of any American company. Perhaps someday we'll get a movie or documentary about the Motor Company that is both entertaining and factual. CN INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives