The tribal warfare between Indian and Harley-Davidson, not only in the showroom stakes but on race tracks too, dates back to more than a century ago, when the Motor Company took the fight to its dominant Indian and Excelsior rivals (see following history section) with its all-new Model 17 FHAC 61ci (998cc) eight-valve racer, which made its competition debut at the gruelling Dodge City 300-mile race in 1916 – and won!
This was the equivalent then of the Indianapolis 500-miler on two wheels, held on a two-mile oval track in the heart of the Midwest. Harley’s Irving Jahnke won at a record average speed of 79.79mph, including pit stops, with Ray Weisharr, a fellow member of the Harley-Davidson factory team known as ‘The Wrecking Crew,’ third. Jahnke’s victory ushered in several years of Harley-Davidson success in US racing, even after the company’s management discontinued running its official team after a totally dominant 1921, in which it swept the board by winning every single National Championship category.
Of all the racing motorcycles ever built, any place any time, the American V-twins of the ‘teens’ and Twenties are unquestionably the most rakish. Lean but meaty, lithe but muscular, they simply exude speed and purpose. If ever a bike looked to be doing 100mph standing still, it was the archetype American Racer from whose spindly frame, close-coupled wheelbase and brawny 61ci V-twin engine evolved a species of superbike that gave almost incredible performance by the standards of the era. Yet at the same time these early Americans possessed a degree of mechanical sophistication quite unmatched by their European counterparts, save for a rare exception like France’s 1912 DOHC Peugeot parallel-twin GP racer.
Born to race on the numerous dirt ovals and board tracks of pre-First World War America, nurtured in the intense competition between half a dozen rival factories, American motorcycles sported such innovations as countershaft gearboxes, all chain-drive transmissions, four-valve cylinder heads and pump-driven mechanical oiling, long before these features gained acceptance on the other side of the Atlantic.
Such novelties brought two attributes in their wake: speed and reliability, so that once the message had spread to Europe, US-built bikes, especially Indian and Harley-Davidson, began to reap great success there too in the hands of such star riders as Freddie Dixon, Douglas Davidson (no relation), Claude Temple and Amedeo Ruggeri.
Nominally available to privateer riders in compliance with rules of the then governing body, FAM, that any factory’s racing motorcycle had to be offered to the public, the 998cc V-twin eight-valve Harley Model 17 was listed for $1500 in 1916 – a huge sum at that time that would buy a pretty nice house in Milwaukee, when even Indian’s most expensive racebikes sold
