r/BoomersBeingFools • u/CyanShadow42 • 1d ago

What is it with boomers and Harleys?

Some background: I am a lifelong motorcyclist, who likes to do lots of different kinds of riding, so I have a few different bikes. I'm also a bad influence and people who spend much time around me usually end up riding too, so my wife now rides and has a bike of her own. Between us we've got 5 bikes in the garage, all different types, and none of them Harleys because all of them together don't add up to the price of a new Harley and if I wanted that kind of bike I'd rather buy a Royal Enfield for all the 1940's tech without the $25,000 sticker on the gas tank.

The other day my MIL, the boomiest baby boomer to ever boom, upon seeing our garage, comments that she's "never seen so many motorcycles" with disgust almost dripping from the words. I point out that in her own neighborhood, I've seen a few garages with several Harleys that look almost identical except for color and a few accessories and suddenly having multiple bikes seems okay in her mind. I wish that was the only case of boomers being like "motorcycles bad but Harleys good" I've experienced, but it's just one of the more obvious and recent instances. Make it make sense please.

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u/SetterOfTrends 1d ago

My wife’s grandmother dated Davidson. She thought he was too crass and married a clothing manufacturer instead. (those times, those social circles)

Ever since I traveled in India and saw them everywhere and learned you could buy parts and find a mechanic in every tiny village who could fix them — and then when I learned the history of why they’re even there in the first place, my dream bike has been an Enfield bullet.

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u/CyanShadow42 1d ago

I don't know if they still make the bullet, or if they export it if they do build it, as they modernized a few years ago, but retro bikes are still their bread and butter. On a study that looked at factory cleanliness (by way of foreign particles in the engine at first oil change) as a predictor of reliability, Royal Enfield came out on top, Harley was near the bottom, only slightly better than a couple Italian makes and a Chinese bike that was so bad the instrument couldn't produce a reading. They're not really my kind of bike but they seem well made, and priced very competitively.

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u/SetterOfTrends 1d ago

Bullet Men

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u/CyanShadow42 1d ago

Neat, glad to see it's still around! I'm mostly only familiar with the interceptor and Himalayan.