It's Becoming Pretty Ritzy To Haul The Hogs Out Of The Closet

It doesn't take a knucklehead to know that a panhead is not the same as a shovelhead.

Some motorcycling students of hogs will know that I have been hanging around with bikers again.

Real students of hogs will instantly know that knucklehead, panhead and shovelhead are all biker terms for the configuration of valve covers on a Harley-Davidson.

Various categories of Harleys include touring, softails, low riders, dyna glides and sportsters.

Along with the Harleys were Suzukis, Kawasakis, Hondas, Yamahas, custom-builts, ancient classics and what-not.

To get you all this information (which you can't live without), I teamed up with Lloyd Cooney and went to the big motorcycle show at the Washington State Convention Center last weekend.

Cooney, the former head of KIRO-TV, is a bike enthusiast. He's a very knowledgeable bike hobbyist who knows a lot of professionals in the game.

"Hi, Lloyd!"

"Hey, Lloyd!"

"Still got your softail?"

These were just a few of the greetings Cooney got. Lloyd himself is a diehard Harleyite.

I asked him how much his love for Harleys is practical and how much subjective - i.e., the way some men fix on Cadillacs and some women swear by Nordstrom.

Cooney grinned at the question. "I guess," he finally said, "that it's about 80 percent subjective. No, I wouldn't trade my Harley softtail for any of these."

Cooney, as you may know, is a member of an informal riding

club, sometimes called the Mild Ones, sometimes called Hell's Rotarians. It's a group of about 35 well-heeled bikers - people like Martin Selig, Kemper Freeman, Herb Bridge, Dennis Westin, Tom Farr, Bob Gerund and Ron Dunlap.

Cooney himself has owned three Yamahas and two Harleys over a 22-year span. He now owns a custom Harley softail.

Cooney introduced me to Peter Catherwood, something of a genius among bikers.

Peter, who lives in Redmond, runs Pete's Custom Cycle; he customizes bikes and even had on display one he built himself from scratch.

Next came a rather large fellow with the wonderful name of Claud Vincent Jinks, who is the district manager for Harley-Davidson Inc. in Milwaukee.

After a prolonged slump, Harley is now back in favor with bikers. A bitter old joke used to have it that a Harley owner needed two Harleys - one in the shop and one to ride.

"The man who brought Harley back," Claud said, "was a guy from Seattle, Vaughn Beals. He used to work at Boeing."

As it happened, Harley's bad period was from 1969 to 1982. It was in 1981 that Beals organized a group and bought the Harley factory from its former owners.

Beals is now chairman of Harley-Davidson Inc. and it's literally true you can't just walk in the door and buy a Harley in Claud's district, 19 dealers in Washington and part of Oregon.

"Everybody had to take a pay cut when Beals took over. Then he went to work on quality control. He made a deal with his union workers - in exchange for job security they would be in charge of quality control.

A big boost at Harley, Jinks said, came in 1984 when they introduced the Evolution engine, a more reliable power plant.

An infusion of cash occurred in 1987 when Beals took the company public and sold stock.

"I've got some of that stock," Cooney said. "It has split twice since I bought it. I didn't have any inside knowledge - I just bought it out of sentiment because it was Harley."

Claud Jinks said Harley-Davidson turns out about 80,000 bikes a year. The demand is so great they could put on another shift, but Beals and his people don't want to tamper with quality.

So there is a waiting list for Harleys. You have to order months in advance. Jinks says that 62 percent of all bikes above 850cc are sold by Harley.

"Of course," he said, "Malcom Forbes helped too." Forbes is the late zillionaire publisher and bike enthusiast. Because of Forbes, more and more celebrities wanted to have their pictures taken on a Harley.

Harley's identity is still somewhat connected in the public mind with outlaw bikers, like Hell's Angels. But there are dozens of less threatening bike clubs, including the Christian Motorcyclists Association (CMA) which claims 35,000 members.

"The profile of the Harley owner is interesting," Jinks said. "We found that the average Harley owner is 39.5 years old, has done some post-graduate college work, is a family man with a wife and two kids and makes $56,000 a year."

None of this is meant to imply that the other cycles, mostly Japanese makes, are inferior to the Harley. But love is still in the eye of the beholder. On our way out, we passed some Honda Gold Wings, generally considered the Cadillac of luxury bikes.

"Would you ever aspire to one of those?" I asked Cooney.

"No," he said, smiling at himself, "I think I have more fun with my Harley."

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.