Outlaw Machine: Harley-Davidson and the Search for the American Soul Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Outlaw Machine: Harley-Davidson and the Search for the American Soul Book

The Harley-Davidson motorcycle, writes Brock Yates, is a quintessentially American machine: "flawed but honest and forthright, bombastic and audacious like the nation that produced it." Anyone who has pulled off the road to let a pack of Hells Angels roar by, or who has watched an executive trade in his Rolex for leather chaps and a custom Softail, also knows that the allure of the Harley is its rebellious, bad-guy mystique. In Outlaw Machine, Yates sets out to document the history of Harley-Davidson, as a company and as a symbol that helped create--and now sustains--American motorcycle culture. What Yates gives us, in prose that aims for the sound and fury of his subject but sometimes suffers from a lack of agility, is a modern American success story--"the long ride of the Harley-Davidson into the mainstream." It is the story of how the Harley became the vehicle of choice for rebels and outlaw bikers; how the company distanced itself from this media-enhanced, antiestablishment image as it suffered the onslaught of Japanese imports; how the company stumbled, close to bankruptcy, into the '80s when it realized that the hard-core biker contingent exhibited unequaled brand loyalty. "If this rebelliousness, this sheer vitality and off-the-wall lust for the elemental life could somehow be tapped to offset the seamless onslaught of the Japanese, perhaps ... Harley-Davidson could survive." Harley-Davidson has capitalized on its "reputation of veiled menace" to establish a marketing niche for the record books, and its classically styled, gleaming machines have become one of the most sought-after status symbols of the '90s. Yet Yates suggests that the Harley's power transcends the mainstream's co-option of its renegade image. "If that rumble, that ungodly roar, that death threat to collectivism and convention dies away, it will be time to turn out the lights." --Svenja Soldovieri Read More

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  • Product Description

    For decades, motorcycles have been the ultimate symbol of danger, rebellion, and freedom, and Harley-Davidson bikes have always been the baddest of them all. Now, with Outlaw Machine, noted automotive writer Brock Yates tells the definitive history of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Harleys from their relatively wholesome prewar image to the birth of the Hells Angels, and their current worldwide status as the ultimate in style and attitude. He also tells the success story of the company itself, a small family business that transformed itself into the industry leader.

  • 0316967181
  • 9780316967181
  • Brock Yates
  • 4 May 2000
  • Little, Brown & Company
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 272
  • illustrated edition
  • Illustrated
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