Finally. Harley Owners Group (HOG) is a bona fide Harley club, including member benefits, for anyone who purchases a new Harley-Davidson. HOG, established by the company in 1983, was the marketing department’s attempt to connect with riders and build the Harley-Davidson culture. The acronym plays into the motorcycle’s history, there’s a reason it’s called a Hog, but it’s not because it’s a corporate biker’s club. In other HOG-related news, back in 2006, the company was able to change its NYSE stock ticker symbol to HOG. Shares immediately spiked to a record high of $74.93. And then the excitement cooled off. Today, a HOG stock is trading at around $40 a share.
The truth is, the Hog hoopla harks back to Harley-Davidson’s racing days. During the 1910s through to the 1920s, a burly group of farm boys led the H-D racing team to prominence. Otherwise known as The Wrecking Crew, these fearsome hog farmers made a habit of winning. To celebrate, they began taking victory laps with one of their pigs each time their team won. The pig became their mascot and they became known as the Hog Boys. The Hog comes from strength and prowess straddling power and speed. And it comes from the mark those American boys made on racing history.
The Bicycle Model
You read that right. H-D came out with a standard bicycle in an effort to lure young boys into the trademark mode of locomotion. It was from 1917 to 1921 that the company offered the Harley-Davidson Model 318. The product was costly. The Davis Sewing Machine Co. built the bicycles with parts shipped from Dayton, Ohio. After four years of paltry sales, the product was dropped from its line.
An advertisement of the day pictures two boys whizzing by on bicycles with another boy, forlorn, watching them ride by. “Gee, wish I had one,” reads the ad. It goes on: “What sport a fellow can have with a good bicycle! Cross-country spins with ‘the bunch!’ Hunting and fishing trips! Too bad every boy can’t have a Harley-Davidson Bicycle.”
“Harley Davidson Popular With Uncle Sam”
So, read a newspaper article of the day in the midst of the Pancho Villa Expedition. As it turns out, WWI was not H-D’s first military contract. That goes to the military expedition on the Mexican border. Sent to the conflict by President Woodrow Wilson, Army General John J. Pershing immediately requested Harley-Davidson motorcycles in order to fend off Mexican revolutionary, Villa, and his men. Then H-D president, Walter Davidson, worked closely with the War Department in supplying the motorcycles, as well as training the men to operate them.
Some motorcycles were equipped with machine gun-mounted sidecars. When the U.S. entered WWI a year later, the War Department put their order in. Twenty-thousand H-D motorcycles. Fun Fact: Though Pancho Villa is commonly pictured on horseback, Villa relied on motorcycle transportation as well. His brand of choice was not a Harley, he rode an Indian.
The Green Omen
Green may be lucky for the Irish, but for the Hog, it’s a bad sign. No one knows exactly where the superstition came from, but bikers know that an olive-green painted motorcycle is bad luck. There are several theories. Most of them are associated with motorcycles used in WWI and WWII. Painted Army green and used for messaging and general transport along enemy lines, many men were killed delivering messages. Snipers routinely took out soldiers on motorcycles. Their ghosts apparently haunted the green painted machines. Perhaps it was PTSD-related?
Another issue with green-colored motorcycles is that since many of them that were used in WWII and then sold after the war, they were not in the best condition. Those Army-green motorcycles were unreliable, breaking down easily and becoming a symbol of bad luck. During the early racing days, Harleys lost too many Englishmen riding olive-green bikes. Engendering animosity, it gave those bikes a bad name. And, finally, perhaps green is just an unlucky color, with cultural significations of greed and jealousy. The superstitions were real, but they’ve been fading in recent years.
Harley-Davidsons Hit the Big Screen Sooner Than You Think
Motorcycle gangs like Hells Angels began popping up after WWII. Hunter S. Thompson, an eccentric journalist of the peculiar, documented motorcycle gangs’ outlaw lifestyle in his 1966 book. When Easy Rider hit the big screen in 1969, the movie about life on the road, freedom and the rebellious counterculture became a blockbuster. Harley-Davidson and Easy Rider were, like, synonymous.
But Harley-Davidsons starred in the movies much earlier. The outlaw biker genre debuted with The Wild One. Based on gangs like Hells Angels, and starring Marlon Brando as rebellious gang leader “Johnny Strabler,” the movie portrayed (and popularized) reckless biker subculture. Brando’s character donned a Triumph Thunderbird, but co-star Lee Marvin rode a Harley-Davidson Hydra Glide.