The legendary story of Harley-Davidson's rise to power--not only as an international industry leader but as an American cultural icon. How did the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, originally a machine for casual riders, evolve into a symbol of defiance and liberation? An embellished 1947 Life magazine article about a California town terrorized by gangs of motorcycle punks changed the world's perception of motorcycles from sporty machines to menaces-to-society, and as the loudest and heaviest bikes on the market, Harley-Davidsons were considered the baddest of them all. Outlaw Machine chronicles the fascinating social history that built Harley-Davidson's reputation--including the rise of Hell's Angels and the counterculture classic Easy Rider --and, more entrancing still, the bike's and its company's storybook rise to international fame and popularity. Written by renowned automotive journalist Brock Yates, Outlaw Machine is the definitive book on the Harley-Davidson and its place in American culture. "Mr. Yates is a devout Hogophile...he tells a good story and loses as many teeth along the way." -- The Wall Street Journal " Outlaw Machine is a bitch of a fine payoff. This is an extremely smart book. In the business we have chosen, Brock Yates is The Man." --Hunter S. Thompson "If you're not born to be wild enough to actually buy a Harley but you still have Easy Rider daydreams, this bible of the great American two-wheeled death machine is for you." -- Maxim The legendary story of Harley-Davidson's rise to power--not only as an international industry leader but as an American cultural icon. How did the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, originally a machine for casual riders, evolve into a symbol of defiance and liberation? An embellished 1947 Life magazine article about a California town terrorized by gangs of motorcycle punks changed the world's perception of motorcycles from sporty machines to menaces-to-society, and as the loudest and heaviest bikes on the market, Harley-Davidsons were considered the baddest of them all. Outlaw Machine chronicles the fascinating social history that built Harley-Davidson's reputation--including the rise of Hell's Angels and the counterculture classic Easy Rider --and, more entrancing still, the bike's and its company's storybook rise to international fame and popularity. Written by renowned automotive journalist Brock Yates, Outlaw Machine is the definitive book on the Harley-Davidson and its place in American culture. The legendary story of Harley-Davidson's rise to power--not only as an international industry leader but as an American cultural icon. How did the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, originally a machine for casual riders, evolve into a symbol of defiance and liberation? An embellished 1947 "Life magazine article about a California town terrorized by gangs of motorcycle punks changed the world's perception of motorcycles from sporty machines to menaces-to-society, and as the loudest and heaviest bikes on the market, Harley-Davidsons were considered the baddest of them all. Outlaw Machine chronicles the fascinating social history that built Harley-Davidson's reputation--including the rise of Hell's Angels and the counterculture classic "Easy Rider--and, more entrancing still, the bike's and its company's storybook rise to international fame and popularity. Written by renowned automotive journalist Brock Yates, Outlaw Machine is the definitive book on the Harley-Davidson and its place in American culture. First Contact The noise. The god-awful death rattle issuing from the bowels of his infernal machine. He had been a quiet kid, one of those bashful back-markers in elementary school, a pasty-faced runt lost in the playground stampedes and the adolescent classroom chatter. Now, suddenly, as a junior in high school, he had reinvented himself, a transmogrification of quasi-lethal intensity. Among the brush-cut and bobby-soxed hierarchy of 1950s teenage life, he cut a wide swath, swooping among the Goody Two-shoes aboard his black-and-chrome monster. Wrapped in a wide-collared leather jacket studded with chrome, he was someone to be reckoned with, a stern-faced stud on a bad-ass motorcycle. His classmates watched him in a confused state of part scorn, part envy, from the vantage point of establishment tools: teenagers operating in the mainstream of conventional lusts over fast cars and faster women. But the notion of a motorcycle--no, make that a Harley-Davidson motorcycle--was beyond the pale, drifting into the lurid red-light districts occupied by the devil drug, marijuana, and the white-slave trade. Other guys tried the zooter gig, fashioning themselves in duck's-ass haircuts and peg pants in open defiance of the conventions of khaki and gray flannel--the Fonzi-like prototypes later to be immortalized in Grease and other fifties flashbacks. But the over-the-top gesture, the ultimate fuck-you to the straight arrows and suck-ups of the day was that mo