![]() ![]() ![]() And in 2008, Haggerty also allegedly claimed he’d sold the original bike to the Guggenheim Museum. Then, another collector, Gordon Granger, kicked up a fuss, saying he had purchased the movie bike in 1996. ![]() Parham said he’d bought it from Haggerty in the early 2000s. In 2014, collector Michael Eisenberg paid a whopping $1.35 million for the Captain America, buying it from John Parham, president of the National Motorcycle Museum. There have been many replicas of the star-spangled Captain America chopper over the years, but Haggerty’s bike was the Holy Grail, due to its supposed originality. That’s the motorcycle coming up for sale. So-that leaves the destroyed Captain America stunt bike, which was supposedly rebuilt by Dan Haggerty, of Grizzly Adams fame. It’s not like anyone is going to prosecute them now. At this point, more than 50 years onwards, you’d think they’d have fessed up by now, if it really was a club member. Urban legend blames the Hells Angels for this, but no former club insiders have ever confirmed it, that’s for sure. The other three bikes were stolen at end of filming, and have never been seen again. One of those stunt bikes was trashed while filming the movie’s final scene, where the drug-dealing bikers meet their end at the hands of shotgun-toting rednecks. There were four bikes built for the movie (two versions of each)-two gussied-up machines that were used for filming the nicer shots, and two bikes intended for stunt work. It’s like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but with bikers and civil rights instead of movie stars. I’d highly recommend you read his piece here. Authors and television shows have explored the bikes’ history, with Paul D’Orleans putting together a fascinating picture of the machines’ construction, and the circumstances and people surrounding them. After it was all over, Vaughs and Hardy didn’t get credit for their work on the bike, or their help with the movie in general. The Swingin’ ’60s weren’t as carefree as aging hippies would like you to believe these days. If you research the film’s production, it’s no wonder drugs, fist fights, knives, you name it. These guys themselves were very interesting, especially Vaughs, but due to the usual chicanery and crookedness surrounding movie production and good ideas in general, their names vanished from history for decades. African-American motorcyclists Cliff Vaughs and Ben Hardy built the bikes, with some help from Larry Marcus. The machines themselves were built around police surplus Harley-Davidson Hydra-Glides. Hopper and Fonda both needed choppers to ride through the film Hopper got the somewhat sensible Billy Bike, while Fonda got the raked-out, chromed Captain America. That movie was 1969’s Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson. In the beginning, there was a counterculture movie wrapped in the clothes of a bikesploitation film. It’s supposed to be auction in Texas next month, and it’s going to attract a lot of attention, not just because it’s an icon, but also because of its twisted backstory. The bike we’re talking about is Captain America, the chopper that Peter Fonda rode throughout the film Easy Rider. What’s the most famous motorcycle in history? You could make arguments for different machines, but there’s one bike that not only served as the supporting star in a movie, it also defined a generation’s attitude. ![]()
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