Harley Forty-Eight - bare-bones riding machine (Motoring.co.za)
Model(s) covered: 2010 Harley-Davidson XL1200X Sportster Forty Eight
Anybody who has survived a war will tell you it sharpens your focus to the bare essentials. So it was with the GI's who came back from the Second World War.
Far too restless to settle down in middle-class America, they stripped old motorcycles, notably ex-military Harley-Davidsons, of every component not directly related to propulsion, chopped everything that was left to the bare minimum and got out there to find themselves.
Along the way they invented a new type of motorcycle, the chopper, and a whole new counter-culture.
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