Original subtitles

The rolling thunder of the motorcycle, see?

The God, the motorcycle God is talking to us.

If you've ridden Harley-Davidson, then you've

fallen in love with the Harley-Davidson.

This machine that was started by our grandfathers is love the world over it.

People call it a mystique, I just call it a way of life.

We've had a Cinderella story of ups and downs.

It survived depressions, it survived wars, it's been there.

It's a survivor.

The Harley-Davidson dynasty.

Beneath the gleaming chrome, the growling engine and the sleek and sexy line is the

story of two families who had motorcycles in their blood.

We have that footage of my dad teaching myself,

my sister and my brother how to ride a motorcycle.

Dad's on the back of this bike showing us all the controls

and then he steps off and I do this little... Whoa!

And then I just get this grin on my face that

wouldn't quit for the rest of the day and off we went.

And that was the beginning of our riding.

The legendary Harley-Davidson Motor Company sells over 300,000 motorcycles every year.

The riders of Harley show a loyalty to the bike that borders on obsession.

But what exactly is it that gives these machines such magical allure?

If you have to ask that question, you should be on a bus.

If anybody can get out there and ride, you don't

have to have that big bad bike or image at all.

You just feel like you're out there all by yourself on an easy day.

Nothing bothering you, nothing in your mind.

You've got air and wind around you and the freedom and the beauty of the land.

I always had that passion to be on the road with

the boys and I thought leather was incredibly cool.

Love to wear leather.

It's kind of like sitting in a lazy boy going down the highway.

Harley-Davidson is an American success story.

A phenomenon.

It is the little bike that can do almost anything on the road.

However, the two young men who built the first machine, Arthur-Davidson and

William-Harley, started out by just wanting to have a bit of fun.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Industrial

Revolution in Transport was transforming America.

Henry Ford was building horseless carriages.

Wilburn orville Wright were learning how to fly.

Technological progress was everywhere, especially in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

where a sedate city of gas lamps and cobblestone

streets had suddenly become a booming factory town.

For thousands of immigrants, the city's prosperity

offered a chance to live the American dream.

I mean, everyone thought they could maybe invent something.

They could start a company in their backyard.

William-Harley and Arthur-Davidson were second-generation Americans.

Their fathers were both craftsmen who'd found work in Milwaukee's many factories.

The Harleys had emigrated from England, the Davidsons from Scotland.

William and Arthur met in school and became friends.

Bill-Harley was a quiet man, very artistic, considered a genius,

very, very brilliant.

But he loved to be alone, drawing, growing flowers, fishing.

My dad was a gregarious, generous, open, friendly, nosy guy who couldn't sit

down on a train next to somebody without finding out who he was worried with from.

What he did.

Despite their differences in character, the boys spent long hours together,

playing at mechanics and dreaming of their next big invention.

They were always putzing around, trying to make something.

When they wanted a break, they grabbed their bikes

and fishing tackle and took off to the nearest lake.

They were in their teens when one of these trips down the hilly dirt track to the

lake inspired them to invent a better method of getting there.

They wanted to get to the fishing holes a little faster without

having to pedal so hard and they could have fun on the way.

And what did they come up with?

A gas-powered motor bolted onto a bicycle.

Other people had tried similar things, but the

engines they designed were weak and broke down easily.

William and Arthur were soon drawing up proper plans.

After leaving school, Harley and Davidson got jobs in the manufacturing industry.

Bill Harley became a draftsman and Arthur Davidson made patterns for machine parts.

When their shifts ended, they went down into the

Davidson's basement to work on their invention.

Balancing the hobby with full-time jobs was difficult.

After several attempts to build a motor, William and

Arthur's invention was still in pieces on the basement floor.

They found the inspiration to crack the problem

during one extraordinary night out on the town.

The Bijou Theatre.

This hallowed Milwaukee institution presented cabaret acts from all around the world.

The gorgeous Anna was notorious for her raunchy performances and revealing costumes.

Anna's risque reputation probably drew the lads to the theatre, but it was her

dramatic entrance that stopped them in their tracks.

They saw Anna held riding a nickel-plated

motor bicycle, and that picked their curiosity.

Each evening, after their shifts, they went

into the Davidson basement to work on the bike.

The process was slow and frustrating.

At this time in American history, if you want to start manufacturing

something like a motorcycle, parts are not that available.

Engineering manuals are not that available.

Even gasoline.

You know, today you can go to a gas station and buy it gallons at a time.

In those days, you went to a drug store and you bought it pints at a time.

Two years later, their machine was still little more

than a heap of scrap metal scattered across the floor.

But William Harley and Arthur Davidson were utterly

determined to build the first successful motorbike.

Soon, they would devise a plan that would make their dream come true.

At the turn of the 20th century in Milwaukee, William

Harley and Arthur Davidson set out to make a motorcycle.

Their headquarters was in the Davidson's basement.

At night, the sound of hammering rang through the house, and the young men trod

dirt and grease into the carpets everywhere they walked.

They were tinkering with one of their early carburetors.

Apparently, there was a little mishap.

In fact, there was an explosion in the Davidson house.

Arthur's parents had had enough.

They banned the experiment from the house, and that was final.

My great-grandfather was a carpenter for the railroad, and he felt sorry for the

boys, so he built them the shed in the backyard.

William and Arthur rolled up their sleeves and got back to work, but everything they

built either spluttered into silence, burned out, or didn't start at all.

There was one person they thought could help them.

Arthur's older brother, Walter.

He worked as a mechanic in Kansas.

Arthur knew his brother might dismiss their project

as a complete no-hopper if they approached and direct.

So when the would-be inventors found out that Walter was coming to Milwaukee to

attend a family wedding, they decided to con him.

They wrote him and said, when you come home,

you can take a ride on our new contraption.

Well, when my grandfather, Walter, got home, there wasn't any contraption.

There were parts all over the floor.

Arthur's instinct was correct.

When Walter Davidson saw the mess his little brother had

created, he could not resist stepping in and taking control.

Walter moved back to Milwaukee in order to go

on working on the project in his spare time.

It wasn't long before the three inventors discovered the floor in their designs.

They had been using a standard bicycle, which wasn't

robust enough to support a large and heavy engine.

So they built a sturdier frame and added a

motor three times as powerful as the original.

My grandfather, Walter, then put it together and took the first ride.

By autumn 1903, the three men had built their first working motorbike,

Harley Davidson number one.

The new machine was a marvel of technology.

It got up to 35 or even 40 miles an hour.

And, wait for it, it could go uphill.

A total

of three motorcycles came out of the Harley Davidson Shed that year.

They sold their first bike to a friend for a little less than $200.

Another went to a Chicago businessman called C.H.

Lang, who promptly started the first Harley Davidson dealership.

The first Harley's rode pretty rough.

Not full suspension like you see on a motorcycle today.

You have to remember that the Milwaukee in those days has largely dirt roads,

a lot of potholes.

By that time, Walter, Arthur and William had made

some important modifications to their invention.

The frame had been strengthened and the engine was a lot more powerful.

They didn't think of it at first as being a business, but their ideas changed quick.

Once they had that second model finished by late 19-4, early

19-5, they saw they had something that was good, really good.

The partners hoped to save enough money to manufacture the bike on a large scale.

They simply had a can in the kitchen.

Help on a shelf.

And they just put the money in their can until they had enough to go to the bank.

The friends soon learned a hard lesson when the Davidson's

maid crept into the pantry and stole all the money.

This could have meant the end of Harley Davidson.

Other manufacturers were battling it out for

a share of the booming motorcycle market.

Harley Davidson was in serious danger of never getting on the road.

It's kind of like people in our era, when you look at the explosion of the

internet, you start out with a lot of companies all wanting a piece of this pie.

And so making your company stay around is really going to be a big challenge.

Clearly, a large amount of money needed to be raised in a short amount of time.

The last solution was to go from door to door asking their neighbours for cash.

I met a lady who was a little girl when my grandfather Walter

and his brothers came to their door in Menominee, Wisconsin.

And her father slammed the door in their face and told them to get a job.

Very few people were willing to support the fledgling company.

The inventors needed to find another way to finance their idea and fast.

To rescue the enterprise, they turned for help to the

only person they knew with a well padded bank account.

He was Arthur and Walter's uncle, James McClay.

The 80-year-old bachelor lived alone on a lake, not far from Milwaukee.

He was an eccentric old man.

He was also a beekeeper, and his family called him the Honey Uncle.

McClay was also well known for keeping a tight hold on his money.

He was so thrifty that he actually wrote letters on the back of blank calendar pages.

And he had some money sucked away, and they applied to him for a lot.

Their invention must have appealed to McClay,

because he lent them all his life savings.

The Harley-Davidson Motor Company finally had the money to begin production and

compete in the hot new world of motorized transport.

You could buy an early motorcycle for two, three hundred dollars, where a decent car

would cost at least a couple thousand dollars.

It was easier to maneuver on roads.

Early roads were very poor.

They were rutted.

By 1906, the orders were rolling in, and the

company had a staff of six full-time workers.

They extended the shed in the Davidson's backyard, which served

as the assembly plant, design shop and production office.

But the company continued to grow, and within a year, they'd run out of space again.

So Arthur, Bill and Walter decided it was time to build a factory.

They bought some land on the railroad tracks, Kitty Corner from the home.

It's where the company is today, on 37th and Juneau.

And they put up their first factory.

Well, they're so proud they're all lined up out in front of it, showing off.

The railroad came to him and said, sorry boys, take it down.

You're on railroad right away.

Today, you'd call the lawyers.

What did they do?

They got all their friends together, picked

the building up and moved it a foot and a half.

With any year, the factory was steaming along, and the

founders needed an experienced manager to run the shop floor.

They picked Arthur and Walter Davidson's older brother,

Bill, who was a respected foreman in the railway company.

By all accounts, he was a very good boss to work for.

He strolled on the shop floor, he'd compliment the men on the job they

were doing, and choir bought their families, give them a pet on the back.

They really needed all four of them.

Bill Davidson was a tool maker.

Walter Davidson was a machinist mechanic.

Bill Harley was a draftsman that did the drawings.

And Arthur Davidson had this wonderful gift of gab.

He could go sell anything.

Arthur used his gift of the gab to establish a network of dealers.

And Walter Davidson became the company president.

Walter understood that running a business like

Harley Davidson required a different approach.

When a job was well done, in the factory,

he would go up on the roof and raise a flag.

And Fritzy Gettleman would load up a barrel of beer

and bring it up so all the employees could celebrate.

We knew that if they settled braid together,

they'd probably work harder the next time.

Walter also tapped into a brilliant marketing strategy.

Motorcycle competitions had become a thrilling and dangerous new craze.

Every success meant free publicity for the manufacturers of the winning bike.

Harley Davidson started racing right out of the bag.

They were trying to set speed records.

And they were successful.

Walter himself made his mark as a daring endurance rider.

In 1908, he entered a two-day competition in New York State.

A 365-mile trek through the Catskill Mountains.

As other riders stopped along the course to undertake running

repairs, Walter sped like the wind towards the finishing line.

After he won, he revealed that he hadn't packed a single spare part.

Walter and his motorbike became a sensation overnight.

It was stunning.

It was great advertising.

His performance was so good.

It was so consistent over the event that he was awarded in

additional five points to his already perfect score of 1,000.

Walter Davidson's exploits raised the company's profile

and boosted sales of the bike all over the United States.

In 1908, Harley Davidson produced 450 machines, that number more than doubled in

1909 and again in 1910, when the company made 3,000 bikes.

By 1914, the company had started its own powerhouse racing team, known as the

Wrecking Crew, because it routinely demolished the competition.

Their mascot was a pig.

They'd carry with them on their lap of honor.

Soon the term hog was being used to refer to the motorcycles themselves.

You see them actually marketing a race motorcycle of sports.

They're calling it a stripped stock model.

So, you know, they're letting the customers know that

we're selling a bike that can really kick some butt.

As the company was thriving, the owners began to take on serious challenges,

like getting married and starting families.

Their wives learned quickly that they would always have

to compete with their husband's first love, the company.

They worked seven days a week.

All of them.

My grandmother used to say she'd be lucky if she

saw her husband by 8 o'clock on Christmas night.

The new generation of Harleys and Davidson's also discovered

the highs and lows of being members of a famous family.

I was given stock for every Christmas and every birthday,

but in my little child mind, I thought that was just paper.

I wanted a sled.

I wanted a bicycle.

Who wants a piece of paper when you're growing up?

In

1916, Harley-Davidson landed its biggest

contractor to date, the United States government.

The U.S.

military used Harley-Davidson bikes to search for the Mexican revolutionary

Pancho Villar, who was busily raiding border towns in the southwestern United States.

Bill Harley designed a motorcycle side car unit with the machine gun mounted on it.

And they took that down to Mexico.

And they chased Pancho Villar round with it.

When America entered the First World War in 1917, the army

made full use of the battle-hardened Harley-Davidson's.

Nearly 20,000 of the company's motorcycles went to France.

After the armistice in 1918, the company experienced one of its proudest moments,

when photos pictured the first American soldier to enter German territory,

riding a Harley.

In the early 1920s, there were over 2,000 dealers around the globe.

Harley-Davidson had become the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world.

Meanwhile, an old competitor had been upgraded

and was rolling off the assembly lines in Detroit.

Harley-Davidson would soon be forced to prove its motorcycles weren't obsolete.

By the early 1920s, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company had grown from a team of two

men with a dream into the planet's largest manufacturer of motorcycles.

The partners William Harley, Arthur Davidson, Walter Davidson, and William

Davidson all lived only a short walk from their factory in Western Milwaukee.

All their children grew up together.

And when school ended for the day, the streets were

teeming with young Harley's and young Davidson's.

The kids in the family used to be together all the time.

We had a baseball team.

We played hockey.

And Uncle Walter, he built a rink outside.

Despite long hours at the works, the founders made time to enjoy their success.

They were not only business associates.

They were pals.

They went hunting, fishing together.

They entertained together.

Their lives outside of work, believe it or not, I

think largely centered around motorcycle riding.

I mean, the thing that people have to remember about

the founders of Harley's, they were enthusiasts.

These were not shirt and tie businessmen who were just trying to tap into a fad.

I mean, they were genuine motorcyclists.

The first real test of their friendship came in the early

1920s at a time when the motor car was growing in popularity.

Mass production had made cars more affordable, and

unlike bikes, they protected riders from the elements.

Sales of Harley's began to drop.

The founders tried to launch motorcycles

equipped with side cars as recreational vehicles.

You could put the wife in the side car.

You could put the kid in the side car.

And that worked for a while, but it didn't stem the tide.

On the 29th of October, 1929, the Wall Street stock market crashed.

By 1931, Harley-Davidson found itself struggling for survival

as America entered the worst economic crisis in its history.

The Great Depression just knocked the bottom on of early Davidson for a time.

In 1933, they had a $300,000 operating loss that year.

They thought they may go to business.

In a matter of a few years, nearly all the American

motorcycle manufacturers declared themselves bankrupt.

But the men of Harley-Davidson refused to shut up shop.

They decided to do whatever it took to save their business.

In 1935, they embarked on a hazardous stratagem.

Harley-Davidson Motor Company supplied blueprints, tooling,

dyes to the Japanese to build the motorcycles under license.

The buyer was a manufacturing company called Sanquillo.

Harley-Davidson Technology helped to jumpstart the Japanese motorcycle industry.

Meanwhile, the company had already begun to move in a radical new direction and was

developing plans to overhaul the design of their famous bike.

It would have been a tremendous gamble in a good period for them to do, but it was

an even bigger gamble in the Great Depression.

What they came up with was a bike that redefined the motorcycle.

The engine was bigger and more potent.

Its look was an elegant streamlined art deco

design with a teardrop-shaped petrol tank.

They named it the EL, but because the top of the motor looked like two knuckles,

it quickly became known as the knucklehead.

That was a major breakthrough and it was a beautiful engine.

It's looked upon today as a premier collectible.

The bike even looked fast, as though it could

ride swiftly out of the Great Depression.

When it hit the streets in 1936, it was an instant runaway success.

Then came 1939, and Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.

When the US entered the conflict after the bombing of her fleet at Pearl Harbor,

the American Army commissioned nearly 90,000 vehicles.

So business boomed again at Harley-Davidson.

The company was also, at that time, entering a period of profound change.

Bill Davidson had died at the age of 66 in 1937.

It was a great loss for both his family and his workers.

He was always down on the shop floor talking to the employees, kept a black

book in his pocket, and would lend money to the employees if they needed it.

Never asked for it back.

An employee and his family were living in a very rundown ramshackle house,

almost kind of a shanty.

William A.

Davidson actually purchased all of the building materials

to build this gentleman and his family a new house.

And the agreement that fellow employees would provide the labor.

Five years later, in 1942, the company's president,

Walter Davidson, lays seriously ill in the local hospital.

Walter didn't want his family to see him in his weakened state.

So he stationed a guard outside his door to keep visitors away.

The ban included his nephew, Arthur.

And I had a book, which I thought he'd like.

And the guard wasn't there, and I walked right in.

And I said, Uncle Walter, this is a book that I was given, and it's great.

And I thought you'd like to read it because you are a book man.

And he said, Arthur, thank you very much.

Now leave until it ever come back.

That was it.

Walter's condition worsened, and he called the senior

members of the family to his bedside to name his successor.

He picked his nephew, William H.

Davidson, the oldest male member of the next generation.

He actually leaped frog over Arthur Davidson, Bill Harley, his seniors.

And I don't think they were hard-feeling because

the older generation knew their time was passing.

They wanted young blood.

They wanted new ideas in the company.

In February 1942, Walter Davidson passed away.

He had been instrumental in building the first working Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Bill Harley, the man who drew the original designs, died the following year.

He had over 60 patents for innovations to the machine.

The third founder, the Jovial Arthur Davidson, who built the network of Harley

dealers, was killed in a car crash in 1950.

The Harley Davidson Motor Company was changing rapidly.

New leaders were in charge.

And for the first time in its illustrious history, Harley Davidson was about to find

itself at the center of controversy and scandal.

The Harley Davidson Motor Company thrived after the end of the Second World War.

Soldiers who had ridden Harley motorcycles in the Army came home and bought their own.

In 1947, the Milwaukee Company opened a new factory near

the original Juneau Avenue plant to keep up with demand.

But a few months later, Harley Davidson

experienced an unexpected and unwelcome problem.

Ever since the invention of the motorcycle, there had been a small number

of bikers who had a penchant for mayhem and sometimes violence.

The industry referred to them as the 1%ers.

That was an image Harley Davidson had to put up with through its whole history.

Young men on motorcycles doing outlandish things.

Riders and riding clubs had occasionally

been rowdy, but they were generally harmless.

During the Fourth of July weekend celebrations in 1947, there was a

motorcycle rally in Hollister, California near San Francisco.

Towards the end of the festival, a gang of bikers went on the rampage.

They roared through the town on their bikes, vandalizing local restaurants and bars.

There were several injuries and some arrests.

The story gained momentum two weeks later, when Life magazine published a photo

showing one drunken reveler on a Harley with

a pile of broken beer bottles at his feet.

The caption read, Cyclists Holiday, he and friends terrorize a town.

The publishing of this photo, which was staged, shows a guy sitting on a Harley

looking like a lot of people's worst nightmare.

Harley Davidson was not prepared for the flag

and the fallout from the Hollister photo.

Mass media had suddenly come of age and the picture was everywhere.

This gives rise to Hollywood movies such as the Wild One, and

then it touches off a whole spade of films over the years.

The Wild One starring Marlon Brando was based on the Hollister incident.

Brando didn't write a Harley in the film, but the bad guy played by Lee Marvin did.

And the iconic image of the Outlaw writer became

a reality, embedded in popular consciousness.

The Outlaw image getting pinned specifically on Harley writers was not

direct in the early days, but that became

something that just kind of took a life of its own.

Harley Davidson's managers were torn.

They had spent years establishing a safe family fun image of the company,

and yet the new bad boy stereotype had made their bikes more popular than ever.

Famous people were photographed on Harley Davidson motorcycles,

including one mega-famous hip-swivelling heartthrob.

In 1956, Elvis Presley poses on a 1956 KH model for

the cover of Harley Davidson's Enthusiast magazine.

The company, of course, couldn't help but think

this is pretty cool to have Elvis in our corner.

The management realized that touting the wild side of the

motorcycle lifestyle was actually rather good for business.

If people wanted that racy kind of look, that black leather, that rebel or renegade

attitude, well, maybe that wasn't such a bad idea after all.

That non-conformist image bodes well for Harley Davidson.

Take any rally.

You're looking at an array of different people, what they wear, what their bikes

look like, and what they have a passion for.

In the 1960s, a new consumer market emerged, the baby boomers.

To keep up with changing times and trends, Harley

Davidson decided it was time to refresh the image.

Willy G.

Davidson, the son of Harley's President Bill Davidson, was up for it.

He loved motorbikes.

I would watch my father come home when I was

a little guy, and my dad was an avid rider.

He'd come in in a snowstorm with his sidecar rig.

And that was always the biggest part of my day.

When I'd look out the window and I'd see this thing come down at driveway.

In 1963, Willy G.

helped to reinvent Harley Davidson's design department as

part of a long-term strategy to focus on motorcycle styling.

While the new models were still being hammered out, the

company was facing stiff competition from imported bikes.

Japanese manufacturers were building reliable cycles at much lower prices.

Harley Davidson's falling sales made it vulnerable to corporate raiders.

That was the time of mergers.

Companies were devouring other companies, buying them up.

And suddenly Harley Davidson became an attractive target for several companies.

For the first time since Harley Davidson was founded

in 1903, the family members were sharply divided.

Over the future of the business.

There were people that wanted to sell and there were people that didn't want to sell.

It was a tense time.

There was a lot of stress.

I think that you could feel it as a young person.

I could feel it.

Harley Davidson was America's last remaining major motorcycle manufacturer.

And the struggle over its future threatened

to silence the roar of its motors forever.

In 1969, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company faced a hostile takeover bid.

For men like Willie G.

Davidson, the company's chief designer and his father-president Bill Davidson,

selling the company was a heart-wrenching prospect.

But eventually, after much soul-searching, they realized

it was their only chance to save what they had created.

And when the final bids were in, they settled on

the American Machine and Foundry Company, or AMF.

AMF produced a wide range of things, including boats, golf clubs and bowling balls.

The fact that AMF was American owned, that it marketed a much respected variety

of recreational products appealed to William Davidson.

He thought that, although AMF would become a partner and put money into it,

the family would still run the business.

The new owners brought in vast resources to rejuvenate Harley-Davidson,

but they also brought a corporate mentality

that was difficult for the old guard to stomach.

I remember, as I said, a big meeting with Mr. Gott, from AMF.

He was asked if who would serve on the board.

And he said, none of you.

And that includes you, Bill Davidson, the then-president of Harley-Davidson.

There was a shocker.

There was a tone that, you know, it's okay you, Milwaukee people,

just step back and let us.

AMF folk take things over and we'll run the show from here on M, which of course

didn't create a lot of good feelings with the rank-and-file Milwaukee workers and

some of the management that was here at the time.

I think we were maybe not prepared for a company of that magnitude.

I think that marriage was somewhat difficult.

AMF stepped up production, but the quality began to suffer.

The motorcycles began to leak oil.

And when AMF added its own logo to the bikes,

employees and loyal enthusiasts were appalled.

Probably AMF didn't really have the understanding of the emotional part of

this company and some of our customers and how loyal they are.

And the uniqueness that is part of owning

Harley-Davidson and the lifestyle that we all live.

Economic recession and rising petrol costs had taken

their toll on sales figures by the end of the 1970s.

This meant that AMF no longer saw Harley-Davidson as a sound financial investment.

In 1980, AMF threw in the towel and put its struggling motorcycle division up for sale.

Vaughn Beals, who was a leader in the AMF hierarchy, he came up with an idea and got

several of us together and said, what would

you think of buying Harley-Davidson from AMF?

And of course I was very happy.

In June 1981, 13 Harley-Davidson executives, including Willie G.

Davidson, decided to take an enormous risk.

They gathered every penny they could and, in the end, collected the $82 million

needed to buy Harley-Davidson back from AMF.

One cannot help but have tremendous admiration for what

they pull off because you've got a declining market.

You've got a company that really is struggling in just about every conceivable way.

The new owners announced the return to independence with a rousing slogan,

the Eagle Saws Alone.

Where Harley-Davidson had once sold technology overseas, it now borrowed

management and production techniques from Japan.

The factory had to streamline production and it laid off 40% of the workforce.

But the quality of the motorcycles produced was better than it had been for years.

Suddenly, the Harley-Davidson motor didn't

have that puddle of oil underneath it anymore.

It could go and keep on going.

And then will the G's custom machines, more styling, better styling?

Beautiful looking bikes.

Harley-Davidson also set out to rebuild its relationship with the bike riders.

The company founded Hog the Harley Owners Group.

Today, there are nearly 900,000 Hog members who hold events all over America,

including major rallies in Sturgis, South Dakota and Daytona Beach in Florida.

In 1986, Harley-Davidson became a public company.

It prospered and grew rapidly over the next decade.

It celebrated its centenary in 2003.

We've been through so many different chapters.

We've been through World War I, World War II, the Great Depression,

the buyback, coming close to bankruptcy, to

climbing on top of the custom motorcycle mountain.

People call it a mystique.

I just call it a way of life.

It's a feeling.

When you have a bad day, if you get on a motorcycle and you go for a nice ride,

you can figure out exactly how you have to go through life.

It's a sense of freedom, a sense of the road, the

empowerment, all of that you experience as you ride.

Today, Willie G and his children, Bill Davidson and his sister, Karen,

are the only members of the founding families still working in the business.

But the family spirit of Harley-Davidson rides on.

It makes you feel very proud of what your grandfather

and father worked so hard for all of their lives.

I wish that my father and my grandfather were alive to see all of this,

because I don't think they believe it.

I think the Harleys and the Davidsons are just very, very proud that this machine

that was started by our grandfathers is loved the world over again.

I think that as long as there are two wheels that can be powered, the thrill of

riding a motorcycle will be a unique experience for a lot of new riders.

And I think that will be a fact for many years to come.