Junior vs Senior: the Clash of Old School and New School Bikes
Friday, June 06 2008 | Comments (0)
The Vette, part of the OCC "Old School"
series designed by senior.
In 1984, Harley-Davidson introduced a new line of bikes, the "softail" design, a style that featured a rear suspension system and shock absorbers for a more comfortable ride. They also added the Evolution Engine (usually called the EVO or Blockhead engine), which was more reliable and leaked less oil than the older styles.
For many hardcore bikers, this was a betrayal. The traditional hardtail design was what real bikers rode. And the more reliable motor required less mechanical expertise to maintain, making it easy for just anyone to become a Harley rider. Paul Teutul, Sr. Senior started riding "late" in life, at age 23, but he started in an era where old school styles were all there were. Senior chose to ride Triumphs and Harleys because they were the most traditional bikes around. The new style Japanese bikes, and later the new style Harley's, weren't for him!
The older styles of V-Twin motors--Panheads, Knuckleheads, Flatheads (all named because of the distinct shape of the valve covers)--were what Senior cut his choppers on. Like many of his generation though, he thought the AMF era Harleys were poorly manufactured, hard to maintain, and plain-looking. The solution was to customize your bike: to turn it into something personal and beautiful.
The first bike Senior customized was a 1974 Harley-Davidson Superglide. His son Paulie recalls, "He transformed a drab AMF-era Harley road hog to a sparkling, cherried-out, cherry-red, customized Old school two-wheeler with extended chrome pipes, handsome flame work on the tank (featuring a smiling sun) and back fender, shiny retro spoke wheels."
Because Senior had a solid foundation in steel fabrication and welding (he owned his own steelworks by the time he was 24) he was able to easily do his own customization. But after his divorce in 1995 he was burnt out on the steel business, which he left to his sons Danny and Paulie to run. Senior turned his attention to fabricating choppers in his won basement as a full time hobby. Again, Paulie recalls, "His specialty was working rigid and swing arm frames and chopping them into stretched-out road hogs. In my opinion, he was stuck in a style that was deeply rooted in the 1960s and '70s ... My father was Old School all the way in his early basement days. That was his only style. It was what he knew. Everything else to him was junk. Softails and EVOs were the enemy. There was nothing you could say to convince him otherwise."
The Black Widow Bike, typical of themodern chopper look at which Junior excels
The turning point came at a Daytona 1997 "Biketoberfest." Senior saw his friends shelling out large sums of money for customized bikes with the then-popular "pro-street" look. Senior told them, "Man, I can build you those bikes for half that price." His friends shot back, "You can build those old tinkers, but you ain't building nothing like this." Taking that as a challenge, Senior returned home and ordered a softail frame and new Arlen Ness parts and began to assemble a pro-street bike. Eventually, Senior began to include Junior in the design and fabrication of the bike. Once he'd made his first softail, though, Senior was hooked.
Paulie grew up with his father's bikes, but because he's younger and has less of a personal history with the old school traditions, he is able to draw from both old and new styles to create his custom bikes. The new style his dad was working with caught his imagination. Though Paulie has had no formal artistic or design training, he quickly found he had a flair for creating unique designs from fabricated metal and he found the creative process freeing after the more rigid techniques needed to fabricate rails, beams and other projects in his father's steel works.
Even though he likes modern Pro=street styles, Paulie still likes choppers: "Long before I was into designing bikes, if I had a choice, I preferred the look and curvature of choppers to the standard assembly-line bikes built by Harley-Davidson." Paulie feels free to drift back and forth between Old and New school design, taking what he wants from each. Because he's more comfortable with the modern look, and because that is what sells, Senior was willing early on to step back and let Junior take over design. If Senior has a choice, as in the recent Craftsman/DieHard episode of American chopper, he will opt to design an Old School bike. Senior's original design was an Old School chopper with a shovelhead motor and a kick-start. Craftsman soundly rejected at design in favor of a more modern look. Though that hurt Senior's feelings a bit, he did rally and develop a sleek modern looking bike (with a little help from some unknown artist at Craftsman).
Even so, OCC carries a line of Senior-designed Old School bikes which sell very well. Not everyone turns away from Old School looks!
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