TRENDS IN MODEL IDENTIFICATION
Into the vintage days
Last month, we looked briefly at pre-First World War model identification, and if we look across the pond to America, we find many makers used coding letters and digits, only occasionally model names, and what they used was often descriptive, rather than imaginative.
If we take Harley-Davidson as an example, they employed a year identification which initially was four years adrift from the digit/s applied, thus 5 = 1909, 6 = 1910, 7 = 1911 etc until 1916 when 16 = 1916, 17 = 1917 etc, and when letters were applied, these related to specific models.
Over at Springfield, Massachusetts, factory proprietor George Hendee must have been somewhat of a romantic, choosing the name Indian for his products as a nod to their pioneer standing, and he preferred ‘motocycle’ as a descriptive of his machines, although more and more called them ‘motorcycles.’
Initially, Hendee favoured identifying models by engine type: Single Cylinder F-head, Double and later Twin Cylinder Racer, Twin Cylinder F-head, with models further identified by calculated power output, then, for 1909, frames were in and engines out, leading to the names Diamond Frame (old design) and Loop Frame (new design), with, again, power output. For 1912, it was back to engine type (single or twin) and calculated power output, however with full justification and after an Indian’s one-two-three finish at the 1911 IoM TT (Oliver Godfrey first, chased home by Charles Franklin and Arthur Moorhouse) Indian followed the European trend of listing TT models too.
Into the Roaring Twenties, most makers continued to stick with letter and/or digit
