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The origins of the Chopper are inextricably linked with the period of American motorcycling that straddled World War II. As the country emerged
from the depths of the Depression, motorcycling again became a popular pastime and the establishment of Class C gave it a
wider appeal in that 'ordinary' riders could compete without the expense of specialist race bikes. Class C and the staging
of a number of AMA-sanctioned 100 and 200-mile National races in places like Savannah, Georgia, and Daytona, Florida, started
to attract huge crowds of spectators. Many riders emulated the style of the mildly modified race bikes for street use
- Class C rules meant that race bikes were required to be street legal prior to the race - so that what can be termed pre-war
customs were usually bikes modified with a cut-down or removed front fender and bob-tailed - later shortened to bobbed - rear
fender. Sometimes a front fender was fitted to the back so that the flared end was much further around the wheel than
normal and a pillion pad put on that, the whole being supported by a modified or specially fabricated fender strut.
These modifications were made to both Harley-Davidson and Indian motorcycles reflecting that both were popular American bikes
and that much of the racetrack rivalry was between motorcycles of the two companies. Racing in particular and motorcycling
in general were to be curtailed by the outbreak of World War II for the USA with the Japanese air-strike against Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Another important pre-war development
was the 1936 launch of the overhead-valve EL model of 61 cubic-inch displacement. This was a fast road bike and although its production span was also interrupted
by the war it was to have a major effect on motorcycling. Its introduction was one of the factors that gave Harley-Davidson
a significant advantage over its last domestic competitor, Indian of Sprigfield, Massachusets. Following
the defeat of Japan, US servicemen started coming home and many of them were looking for ways to spend their mustering out
pay and let off steam after a few years in uniform. Harley-Davidson resumed production of the overhead-valve EL models albeit with a few modifications including redesigned tail lights and tank-mounted dashes. (Later both styles
of lights and dashes would appear on custom bikes.) The war had left a distinct influence on motorcycling in other ways;
it led to the superstition about green Harleys being unlucky. Dispatch riders were often considered a target by the
enemy because they were likely to be carrying important information as well as having to contend with dangerous journeys,
land mines, and wires strung across the road to decapitate them in forward areas. The fact that one of the fascist enemies
had been Japan meant that later the new-fangled Japanese manufactured bikes would be derided as 'Jap Crap' and give rise to
T-shirts and bumper stickers that bore slogans that read: 'Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha - from the people who brought you
Pearl Harbor'. A former waist gunner and engineer in the 7th Air Force and later a charter member of one of the earliest
clubs summed up the attitude in a 1986 interview in Easyriders magazine: "Yeah, well those damned rice-heads.
Son of a bitch, I don't understand how, if we won that damned war, it don't look like it. That's the bitch of it - they
got the whole country here. Its' amazing, I still can't believe it but I guess that's what politics is all about."
Of the survivors who came home and started riding motorcycles again, for some it was back to normal and back
to AMA-sanctioned events. For others, it wasn't too straightforward. Motorcycle club uniforms and rally games wouldn't have held the same appeal to restless combat veterans and those who'd buried their comrades
in Europe and the Pacific Islands. The author of From Here to Eternity, James Jones, summed it up as follows:
'About the last thing to go was the sense of espirit. That was the hardest thing to let go of, because there
was nothing in civilian life that could replace it. The love and understanding of men for men in dangerous time and
places and situations. Just as there was nothing in civilian life that could replace the heavy, turgid day-to-day excitement
of danger. Families and other civilian types would never understand that sense of espirit any more than they
would understand the excitement of danger.' Some guys found what they were looking for in the saddle of a big motorcycle,
with equally restless buddies and the endless blacktop - for better or worse the world had changed. Ed Maye, a Colorado
resident, mustered out of the US Navy in 1946 and bought a 74 cubic inch Knucklehead. In 1996, while watching Harleys leaving Severance, Colorado, he recalled the back cylinder fouling the plug, grinding
valve seats and re-ringing pistons and how, on a long run, occasionally the rider had to "shut the throttle off, then
open it up to oil the top end." He recalled the vibrations transmitted to the rider from springer forks less fondly:
"Hoff, a crazy nut, and I, came back from Phoenix almost non-stop and my hands swelled right up." The
first post-war Daytona 200 was run in 1947, the same year as the AMA rally, races and Gypsy Tour in Hollister, California. This hitherto unremarkable event was about to become indelibly inked into the history books. Depending
on which publications are consulted the goings-on at Hollister in 1947 over the Fourth of July weekend were anything from
a full scale riot to little more than an amount of rowdiness and beer drinking. The San Francisco Chronicle
of Monday, July 7, 1947 described it as 'The 40 hours that shook Hollister.' The lines between fact and fiction have been blurred by time and the fact that Life magazine and subsequently
also a movie-maker. Stanley Kramer, both picked up on the incident. Otherwise it probably would have faded into
obscurity as the newsprint yellowed. The beer drinking, spinning donuts, racing in the street and a few arrests for
drunkenness would have simply been put down to 'the boys having too much fun.' Instead, the result was the 1953 Columbia
Pictures film The Wild One. It starred Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin, and regardless of its interpretation of the facts, the film was pivotal in
a number of respects - it set the style for future motorcyclists in terms of clothing and bikes. Brando, as the now
legendary Johnny, wore a peaked cap and Highway Patrol jacket while Marvin as his rival was every inch the up and coming outlaw biker in the sleeveless jacket, scruffy beard, cap comforter and goggles. Brando's Johnny fronted the Black Rebels MC and
rode a Triumph twin while Marvin did the same for the Beetles MC fro the saddle of a chopped hog. As an aside, the latter
club name is where the British pop group The Beatles took their name from.
Apart from inspiring hundreds of youngsters to copy the
rider's styles of both clothes and motorcycles, the film, on a wider scale, incurred the wrath of an America edging its way
toward McCarthyism. The country was becoming concerned about destabilization and to some people the film appeared to
be an abomination that seemingly promoted subversion and anti-social behaviour. It implied that all motorcyclists were
no good hoodlums who were intent only on disrupting American life. This suggestion had already been made after the actual
Hollister incident and the American Motorcyclist Association, keen to distance themselves from it, declared that while 99 percent of
all motorcyclists were upstanding citizens, 1 percent were not. Clubs in Hollister were maligned by this statement. The '1%' was official. Close examination of the photographs
from Hollister at the time in The San Francisco Chronicle show pre-war Big Twin Harleys with the front fenders removed, wide dresser bars on Flanders risers, and at least one with a neatly bobbed rear fender cut
back as far as the saddlebag hangers and fitted with a front fender trim. Class rides. The telescopic forked Harley
later seen in the film The Wild One is treated similarly although these machines were not in production in 1947. British bikes were seen as competition
to the two remaining American domestic manufacturers but were also a source of parts to use on a chopper. H.R. Kaye describes and early 74 cubic inch chopper in his book A Place in Hell about the early days (although
the period described is imprecisely dated): 'It was a masterpiece! The front fender had been removed and a
Triumph front end installed. The rear fender was bobbed and chromed. It had dual headlights, ape-hangers, a custom tank and small
leather saddle that had been pirated from an English racing machine. It had been painted black and polished to a blinding
sheen. The engine was clean and neat as a pin.' The chopper in question was presumably a post-war Knucklehead, 74 cubic inch variants of which were made in 1941 and 1946-47 or a 1948 Panhead, as these were the only years of 74 cubic inch Harleys made with springer forks. Had it already been fitted with telescopic
forks there would have been little point in changing the front ends. He called it Mariah, after the wind. Custom parts were few and far between but the earliest styles had been established having appeared in bobbers and race bikes of the Forties and Fifties. These early modified bikes coined the terminology and helped define certain
parts such as fatbob tanks. A bobber was a cut-down Harley but a fatbob was a cut-down Harley that retained the stock two-piece tanks that the Motor Company had
used from 1936 onward. Frame mods started after the war in the manner of pre-war Hillclimb frame mods and ape-hanger
handlebars were made from crash bars. Before hardly anybody excerpt Harley made handlebars, we took Harley crash bars
- because they were so damned tough and we didn't want them on the bikes anyway - and reshaped them. That's where
the first hooks - you know, out, way up in the air, and down, ape-hangers they call them now - quoted from the same 1986 interview.
Other Custom parts came from the K-model introduced in 1952 such as the solo seat and the Sportster introduced as the XL in 1957. The Sportster tank became a perennial favorite. The rear fender was still a front fender cut down. The reason that a front
one was used was because it had no hinge but followed the correct radius for the diameter of the wheel. Another trick
was to use the more minimal fenders off a British bike - especially the ribbed ones - which made the Big Twins look more sleek. One of the few companies in existence that did make what can be termed 'custom parts' was the one which was started by Lucile and Earl Flanders. Earl was a regular motorcycle competition rider who after
the war started making custom handlebars for other competitors. He bent the tube to suit his customers' requirements
and manufactured them to specific widths. Another product which still bears his name are Flanders risers - sometimes
known as 'dog bones' because of their shape - which are a pair of extension bars to lift the handlebars above the stock handlebar
clamp. Stroker motors became popular when mechanics started discovering that through mixing and matching
of Harley engine components it was possible to increase the capacity of a twin. One method of achieving this was to
use the crank pin, flywheels and con-rods out of the FL flathead and incorporate them into the later engines. The VL had a longer stroke than the overhead-valve engines and when used with the standard bores pistons increased the displacement without having to resort to expensive machining.
The nickname 'Stroker' is self-explanatory since capacity was increased by increasing stroke.
Something happened in March 1948 that would later propel
the chopper far beyond California's freeways. The first motorcycle clubs. By 1954 one of these clubs is reported a rider traveled north on a classic chopper of the time. The machine
featured tall ape-hanger bars as well as chromed XA springer forks. The latter components were the forks from an experimental
World War II Harley-Davidson and were four inches longer than stock springers. The cast VL springers off pre-war Big Twin flatheads were equally desirable for early choppers for similar reasons. The mix and match concept of the chopper was firmly established at the very beginning.
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