Motorcycles have occupied an important place in American popular culture for more than fifty years. Whether used for sport, recreation, police or military purposes or simple transportation, they have come to symbolize a number of America’s most cherished and controversial values. Freedom, violence, risk-taking, masculinity and mobility are all part of the motorcycle’s powerful reputation and mystique. Its prominence in the songs, novels and films of the twentieth century testifies to its overwhelming contribution to America’s cultural landscape.

The motorcycle was an integral part of the 1950s “bad-boy” or rebel persona. Those who rode motorcycles were on the margins of polite, middle-class American society The 1954 film The Wild One, for example, offered Marlon Brando as the leader of a motorcycle gang called the “The Black Rebels” who travel from town to town, drag racing and drinking at local bars. When Johnny is unjustly accused of murder in a small California town, the conservative community seeks him for vigilante justice. The film was banned in several US cinemas and was not permitted in the United Kingdom for fourteen years after its release. Many feared that unruly people would riot in theaters.

In 1969’s Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda put a new rebel on the seat of a motorcycle: the hippie. By placing his heroes on motorcycles as they traveled across America, Hopper reinterpreted the road-movie genre while emphasizing the notion that motorcycles were uniquely suited to the vagabond lifestyle.

Robert Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcyde Maintenance (1974), is also a part of this tradition. The largely philosophical novel centers on the extended motorcycle tour of a father and his son. Pirsig’s message in this American classic is that people should care for themselves (psychologically more than physically) in the same manner that a conscientious person maintains his or her motorcycle. Pirsig stresses importance of human’s symbiotic relationship with teehnology, represented by the motorcycle.

In this vein, the motorcycle also has served as the adhesive for notorious groups. The Hell’s Angels were a rough gang of motorcycle enthusiasts famous for their leather jackets, their appetite for drugs and alcohol and a penchant for violence. The Angels were an intimidating force during the 1960s (evident in their role in Tom Wolfe’s book about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1968). The mere sound of their approach (the collective roar of their engines) invoked fear in the hearts of outsiders. Accordingly, the Rolling Stones hired them as security for the band’s 1969 debacle of a free concert at Altamont Speedway. During the show, some spectators sustained injuries and a few died, although the Hell’s Angels’ role in the deaths at Altamont has been a point of contention. Many commentators trace disillusionment with 1960s counterculture to this day Harley-Davidson motorcycles, or “Hogs,” are the objects of unparalleled cult enthusiasm. These American-made machines are almost universally considered the most beautiful and well-built motorcycles in the world. Proud owners ride them hundreds of miles to conventions where they bask in the presence of those who share their love for these machines. Still, the American monopoly on quality motorcycle manufacturing has come under fire. While BMW has almost always been known to produce well-made bikes, the Japanese have made the largest impact on motorcycle culture in the United States with faster engines and sleeker body designs. Though many consumers prefer the more performance-oriented Japanese models, HarleyDavidson enthusiasts always seem satisfied with the aesthetics and endurance possessed by their famous cycles.

Harley-Davidson memorabilia and collectibles and senior owners also evoke the taming of the motorcycle, in which mass media as well as consumerism have had critical roles. For example, the popular 1950s retrospective television sitcom Happy Days (ABC, 1974–84) featured Arthur Fonzarelli—Fonzie—as the motorcycleriding auto mechanic who defined “cool.” While Fonzie’s reputation for toughness and daring certainly fitted the “bad-boy” image, he was a watered-down version of the motorcycle riders of the 1950s. His relationship with the thoroughly middle-class Cunningham family gave Fonzie a respectability which earlier characters had lacked.

Yet motorcycles also challenge the edges of sport and society One of the most appealing aspects of the motorcycle in America has always been its suitability for deathdefying feats of courage. America’s most famous thrill-seeker, Evel Knievel, has performed his famous leaps almost exclusively on motorcycles. Moreover, motor-cross racing is one of the many maturing X-sports and is successful precisely because it is fast and dangerous. This is what people originally loved and feared about motorcycles. Today these machines are as popular as ever and, though with much less gender specificity they continue to represent and reinterpret, sometimes in a more commodified mode, many of the same values that they did in the 1950s.