Three-Wheeled Harleys Made in Japan

[Chris Haynes]

One major thing that Japan got from H-D was how to make engine castings that would take abuse and last. Sadly they used this technoligy to build their war machinery. Things like the Zero, Kate, Betty.

[Steve Slocombe]

Jerry Hatfield's book 'Inside Harley-Davidson' page 114 reports that in 1932 the company contracted to provide a complete set of blueprints of the 74, 45, 30.50 and 21 cubic inch models to A. R. Child and the Sankyo family for $3000, which covered cost. The Japanese would then pay a royalty of $5000 the first year, $8000 the second year, and $10000 the third. Harley were also obligated to provide engineering services.

[sirhrmechanic]

Just doing some very fuzzy math (the only kind I know how to do...), the VL in 1930 had a list price c. $340. Figure the dealer got about $100 of that. So HD may have been getting around $240 per bike made.

Inking a deal for $26,000 for, basically, paper and intellectual property was the same as selling just 108 bikes over 3 years... and if you take into account that the actual $3K was simply to cover costs, the math is even worse... Can one assume that engineering services were for-fee? Hard to imagine that the deal was worth it, but desperate times lead to desperate measures.

Again, some insight into how this deal worked in HD's favor would be fascinating. There has to be more to it than meets the eye. And to Chris' point, if the Japanese really did learn more advanced casting techniques from them... it was a steal for Imperial Japan.

There is an apocryphal Japan story from Rolls-Royce, BTW, which is part of the reason Henry Royce got into cars and, later, aircraft engines. Royce was not, first and foremost, a car maker. His first fortune came when he invented/patented the first sparkless electric dynamos, motors and switches. These revolutionized electric power and generation as electricity could now be used in dusty environments such as in fabric mills and granaries where previously-available "spark brush" dynamos posed a dust-explosion hazard. With Royce's inventions, you could put an electric motor on a machine or inside a mill and get rid of the steam plant and the overhead pulley systems. Royce also developed a line of electric cranes which were the best in the world... some huge cranes are still in service!

In the late 1800's, FH Royce and Co. sold a crane to the dockyards at Yokohama and shortly thereafter they sent a technical rep to check up on the installation and when he got there, there were two identical cranes on the dockyard. Even the makers plate and all the stamped numbers -- including the serial numbers -- had been identically copied. While assembling the crane, the Japanese had duplicated it down to the smallest detail. This was one of the reasons why Royce (who was facing increased competition from low-cost German-made motors and cranes) decided to look at the automotive industry, which was just taking off, as a new direction for FH Royce and Co. The idea that he drove a French car and found it lacking and 'thought he could do better' is utter balderdash. His French Decauville, in fact, was a fine car, one of the best of the day. And while he probably learned a lot from playing with it, there is no doubt that he had a business plan in mind... and building a car/car company was not simply some 'whim' as portrayed in legend.

Anyway, the whole relationship with HD and Japan most certainly warrants a deeper look... There is most definitely a scholarly article in there somewhere! Probably a book. I'd love to hear more from some of the HD historians/authors lurking on the forum... Mr.'s Hatfield and Wagner??? I know you are out there...

Cheers,

Sirhr

[Peter Cooke]

Panther... HD definitely exported motorcycles. I think the London dealer was called Warrs (or Warres??) and were around in the late 'oughts or early teens. Certainly they were importing HD's. There were dealerships in other countries.

Cheers, Sirhr

I was in Warr's last year. Europe's oldest dealership established in 1924. They were kind enough to let me into the workshop a look at the freshly restored 1914 HD single they were fine tuning for a rally the following day. It's the bike in my avatar.

[Steve Slocombe]

Fred Warr is still going, and I remember him when he was 'young Mr Warr' and his dad was running the shop. Now Fred's son is at the shop. An organisation called Harleysons was the UK importer before Warr became established, and there were a significant number of Harleys in England by WW1. The Mortons publishers archive has pictures of a gaggle of Harley sidecar outfits taking wounded servicemen out for a ride. One of the bikes pictured looks like a 1913 model. I also found a picture of Steve Barber's Cannonball Run bike showing the same UK number plate as it carries now.

[Tommo]

Over the years I've collected HD adverts from all over the world and the earliest one from England is 1914 and has "" Robertsons, 157b Portland Street, West London."as the distributors.
December 1914 is the same but also has "Daniel Brash, 98 Great Western Road, Glasgow." as the Scottish distributor.
April 1915 and it is the "Harley-Davidson Motor Co. 59 Newman St., Oxford St., London.
By October 1915 the address has changed to "Harley-Davidson Motor Co., No 1 Harleyson House, 74 Newman Street, London."
January 20th 1916 and it's "15 Harleyson House" and January 27th 1916 it's "21 Harleyson House"
From April 1916 on it's "Harley-Davidson Motor Co. Ltd., Harleyson House, 74 Newman Street, London."
The last advert I have with this address is April 1928.
So my take on this is that The HD Motor Co. took over the UK distributorship of their own products in early 1915 and finally shut that operation down sometime in 1928.

[Tommo]

I thought it might also be interesting to post the first and last pages from the 1916 HD sales brochure as this also confirms the London address and the fact that the brochure was printed in England.
I've also added a further 1914 ad that is a bit of fun and may interest some.