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Cult motorcycle from Easy Rider: Captain America

Intermot countdown 8: the movie bike

The cult bike par excellence, the most famous film machine of all time: Captain America, Peter Fonda’s Panhead from Easy Rider. To this day, this Harley is the epitome of the chopper. There is no more iconic.

Writing this story is three times difficult for me. On the one hand, the inclined reader should know that I am not a chopper driver, but rather the handlebars a little lower and the engine a little stronger. Second, I was just nine when Easy Rider rattled publicly through the film projector for the first time. And the third and saddest: Dennis Hopper, the director of Easy Rider and film buddy of Peter Fonda, died just these days. And that hits us deeply when you see him again as Billy and as a picture of a biker next to Captain Ameria protting across the screen.

I try anyway. Flashback to 1969: Americans are waging war in Vietnam, a quarter of a million people protested in Washington. The Americans land twice on the moon. Richard Nixon becomes US President, Willy Brandt Chancellor. Motorcycling is pretty out in Germany, most of the big motorcycle manufacturers are bankrupt or about to go broke. The hippie movement reaches its peak in Woodstock, flower power, LSD, rock music, a huge counterculture to the bourgeois establishment is emerging and is being lived.

Cult motorcycle from Easy Rider: Captain America

Intermot countdown 8: the film bike

Sdun

No fenders, no brakes, at that time freedom was really unlimited.

AT milestone in film history that all real bikers still cling to today. Why? Well, there isn’t so much talk in the film, but there is a lot of smoking, drinking and driving. Things that are still dear to many bikers today. So that fits. And shouldn’t one still feel a bit like an outlaw nowadays with the media hate speech against motorcyclists that flares up again and again? One may. Easy Rider met and meets the lifestyle of many bikers.

If you didn’t know what a real chopper looked like in 1969, you knew it after this film: Rigid frame, endless fork, apehanger handlebars, drop tank. After Easy Rider, numerous series copier machines emerged, initially tentatively, but then increasingly at the end of the 1970s. But real choppers are not allowed to be mass-produced. To chop means chopping off, screwing away in the figurative sense. And it is exactly this philosophy that the two Harleys embodied in the film. Standard Harleys, extremely reduced and decorated at the same time. Style-forming.

Cliff Vaughn created the two movie motorcycles. The Captain America was created from a 1951 Harley-Davidson FL, which Peter Fonda had probably bought from police stocks. The 1207 cubic centimeter panhead engine shakes its 50 horsepower through a four-speed gearbox onto the unsprung rear wheel. Almost everything on the machine was chrome-plated: frame, engine cover, fork tubes, footrest system. Since it would have been dangerous to hit the extremely flat fork with high braking forces, the front brake was omitted entirely. And there it "in southern California" never rains anyway, Wyatt didn’t need a front fender. For this, he can have his back massaged on an extremely narrow bench with rivets and lean cool against a high sissy bar on which his helmet rides.

The spectacular fishtail tailpipes were sensational, as was the stars-and-stripes tank painting, which was copied a thousand times over. And the narrow 21-inch model in the front wheel still fits the moderately wide 120-inch rear wheel today. Such a Harley still works. Sparkling chrome, attention to detail, extremely slim. Matthias Korte, managing director of the Harley-Factory in Frankfurt, built the replica driven here in painstaking detail.

Sdun

The mother of all choppers: Filmbike by Peter Fonda.

It also takes some effort to kick the machine, which is fed from a carburetor, and start it off carefully. The V2 pops out of the fishtails and plays the song of the highway: dirty, snotty, tart – pure rock ‘n’ roll. But nothing for public roads in Germany. So you’d better stay on the private property of the Harley Factory. Nobody should give up on this enormously valuable bike or even attach a vile parking ticket.

Anyone who has never driven a rigid frame will not miss a thing. It hops and stumbles over the smallest joints like crazy. After ten minutes, the bottom hurts badly. So you have to take your hat off to the film sizes. Incidentally, in front of the passenger Jack Nicholson, who was provincial attorney George Hanson in the film with Fonda on the back. And they really drove many, many miles on Easy Rider. Thank God the Lord made mankind invent rear suspension. Dennis Hopper is now taking a walk with him up there. We have a fairly long straight cloud towards sunset. To say it with Steppenwolf: "We can climb so high, I never wanna die."

Technical data of the Captain America

Sdun

The two-cylinder V-engine from Panhead with 1207 cubic centimeters brings almost 60 hp to the road.

Engine:
Air-cooled two-cylinder four-stroke 45 degree V engine, two valves per combustion chamber, controlled via bumpers and rocker arms, bore x stroke 87 x 101.6 millimeters, 1207 cm3, 44 kW (60 hp) at 4800 rpm, coil ignition , a 33 carburetor, kick starter, wet clutch, primary drive via chain, four-speed gearbox.

Landing gear:
Steel tubular frame, front fork, rear wheel rigidly guided, rear drum brake, 21/16 inch wire-spoke wheel front / rear, double bench seat with sissy bar

Price:
Priceless

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