HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, HARLEY
40 years of Harley-Davidson GmbH
- In 1981, Harley-Davidson is entered in the German commercial register as a limited liability company.
- The brand's history in Germany goes back more than 95 years.
- Last year, over 11,000 new H-D motorcycles were registered in this country.
NEU-ISENBURG (April 22, 2021) – MTV goes on air in New York, a few hard rockers get together in California to form a band called Metallica, and Roger Moore, alias James Bond, is on a „For Your Eyes Only“ mission on cinema screens around the world. The year is 1981, Harley-Davidson frees itself from its previous owner, the conglomerate AMF, through a spectacular management buyout in the USA and is entered in the commercial register in Germany as a limited liability company.
The number of newly registered Milwaukee Irons in Germany is still manageable, but that is set to change rapidly as the company returns to the quality levels of the pre-AMF era, continues to improve them, presents a brand-new engine a few years later with the Evolution, and lands a new bestseller with the Softail.
40 years of Harley-Davidson GmbH – it's worth taking a look in the rearview mirror, because the history of the US brand actually goes back much further in Germany. No one knows exactly how far back, but it must have been sometime in the first half of the 1920s when the first wooden crates loaded with motorcycles from Milwaukee arrived in this country. Word quickly spread throughout the republic, which was experiencing economic and cultural upheaval, that the machines from the land of opportunity were extremely robust and reliable. Numerous successes in German and European motorsports contributed to the US brand's good reputation.
However, in the following decade, the Nazis and World War II brought an abrupt end to the flourishing import business. It was not until 1956 that the Suck company in Hamburg was allowed to restart as a general importer. In the 1970s, Eysel Motorsport in Langenselbold took over the job, and in 1976, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company established its own factory branch in Groß-Gerau.
Since then, Harley-Davidson has moved several times within the Rhine-Main area before settling in Neu-Isenburg in 2013 as Harley-Davidson Germany GmbH. From here, 67 German and nine Austrian dealers are currently supported. And they know their job: last year, more than 11,000 new Harley-Davidson motorcycles were registered in Germany. So it's no surprise that Germany is now one of Harley-Davidson's top three markets worldwide. There are now likely to be well over a quarter of a million Harleys on German roads, and tests by the relevant trade media confirm their impeccable quality.
With the Pan America and the new Revolution Max V-Twin, the US manufacturer is opening a new chapter in its history in 2021. Harley-Davidson is looking forward to the coming years and decades, and not just in Germany.
Text & image credits: Copyright Harley-Davidson
