Harley-Davidson

It’s an American icon, it’s been idolized and immortalized ­­in our imaginations. Barely any brands have made their mark quite like this classic creation. Rev your engines, we are going to kick start your English as we take apart the tale of Harley-Davidson on this week’s episode of FYI!

Transcript

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[Music] it's an american icon it's been idolized and immortalized in our imaginations barely any brands have made their mark quite like this classic creation[Music] rev your engines we're going to kickstart your english as we take apart the tale of harley davidson on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Applause][Music][Applause] hello hello hello my amigos and welcome to this another exciting episode of fyi for your english and i can't believe it we're up in the 40s hey kind of like me i'm 43 years old well this is our 43rd episode look at that so i guess we have a reason to celebrate if you think about it there's always a reason to celebrate and i just want to thank you guys before i even begin for commenting for raiding the podcast and for all the positive feedback i've been receiving from you guys thank you thank you thank you so much from the bottom of my heart i really appreciate it and remember if you want to see certain subjects or topics in the future just let me know i'd love to tackle them well this week we're gonna talk about an american icon nope we're not talking about baseball nope we're not talking about apple pie we're talking about another american icon harley-davidson they are the world's biggest motorcycle manufacturer careful with the pronunciation there to manufacture and the person who does it is a manufacturer or the company so using it in context harley davidson manufactures motorcycles or they are manufacturers and there are over 2 000 dealerships this is a good word to know a dealership is a confession this is a place where they sell cars and motorcycles so there are over 2 000 harley-davidson dealerships in the world and the person who sells the person who works at a dealership is called a dealer and they're located in 67 countries and i know a lot of you guys are probably thinking right now you know maybe motorcycles is not my thing others of you are saying yes finally finally we're going to take a look at some motorcycles and i've got to be brutally honest i've never been a big fan of motorcycles i like the noise that they make i like you know the the way they look i think they're very sleek laszlina bonitas right they're very sleek but i've never been big on motorcycles let's put it this way i've ridden on motorcycles but i've never driven one myself so to ride ismontar and to drive is and i've got to say you know when i started doing this episode i said listen if i can convince myself to like motorcycles by the end of this episode well then hopefully i can convince you guys too those of you who are not into motorcycles but again this is more than a motorcycle it's an institution and when we think of motorcycles a lot of times we think of these bikers as you know these thugs estos criminales we think of hell's angels and and all those stereotypes and we're going to look at all that stuff later on in the pod but one thing i realized is that there are bikers from every walk of life every profession out there when i watched a documentary one of the ways i prepare for these episodes i saw that there were lawyers accountants nurses and people from every single profession you could possibly imagine so let's make one thing clear from the get-go this del primer momento when we say bikers we're talking about all kinds of different people not just one kind of person that is usually stereotyped in many movies which we will look at bikes in pop culture which is another thing that really helped popularize a lot of motorcycles so do you care to join me as we fall in love with motorcycles together specifically harley-davidsons well i've already said the word icon a couple times you say icono we say icon and it's also been idolized i said and when once we idolize something we put it on a pedestal we treat it like an idol i think that word is pretty recognizable and then i said it's been immortalized in our imaginations and our imaginations are nuestras imaginations and obviously immortalized this immortalizado palabron ai then i said barely any brands there's my alliteration apenas ningunas marcas so apenas marcas casi ningunas have made their mark and to make your mark is to leave a mark on history to be important to stand out this dakar and nobody has made their mark in the motorcycle world quite like these guys and their classic creations and then i don't know about you guys but when i heard that revving of the engines revolutions we say calentar los motore says to rev your engines and when i was preparing the episode and i listened to this sound bite of a harley being started i just realized how impressive this sound was it literally shook me i was in my office i had my headphones on i will never forget it and remember this wasn't a real harley this was a sound bite that i found on the internet and it shook ito templar it shook my whole office so you know what i think we should listen to it again it is pretty impressive and i imagine if you're sitting on it and it's vibrating and moving it must be a feeling like no other let's hear that harley engine that distinctive harley engine which we'll learn about where that sound comes from and the fact that harley initially marketed themselves as having a quiet motorcycle very far from their truth or their marketing slogan these days let's hear that harley engine starting up oh that is beautiful it's purring to purr is it's what a cat does but a lot of times when we talk about a car or the sound of a bike or a car's engine you could say it purrs as well as i said before it's american-made when you think of american brands you think of levi's coca-cola and harley-davidson but despite having this american reputation despite his apesarde harley-davidson also has facilities facilities are installations in india which they opened up in the year 2011. they also have an assembly plant in brazil and lately they've been looking to expand out into asia into thailand so the company employs around 6 000 people that's right 6 000 people working for this company so it's a big company but it's not as big as microsoft or google or these you know huge conglomerates if you look up harley-davidson on the stock market you'll see it's listed as hog h-o-g which is a word that means pig also to hog is to take more than your portion i think you say a caparar so don't hog the sheets that's something my wife always says to me no me quite no cojas but also the word hog is another word for a harley davidson that's right the word hog has become synonymous with harley-davidson bikes and the reason why is there was a member of the harley racing team one of the reasons harley davidson got famous was because of the wrecking crew this was a racing team that they had and this guy ray weishar was his name he owned a piglet this was his little pet and it was also the team's mascot and well it caught on people said wait let's call it a hog i like it and from that day forward harley davidsons have been called hogs but where and when did it all start well we have to rewind it's 1903 and we're in milwaukee crack a beer una ferreta why you might ask well because milwaukee is where budweiser and many other american beers come from milwaukee is famous for its beer it's also famous for where harley davidson was founded the company was established in 1903 and the first recorded prototype evidently was written a year later and that's a verb we need to master in this episode ride road ridden and it was founded by a group of guys a guy named william harley hm that makes sense and three brothers the brothers arthur william and walter davidson and they got together they wanted to motorize a bicycle because at the turn of the century bicycles were huge and when i say huge you guys can't even imagine now you know maybe eighty percent sixty percent of the population has bikes there everybody did it was all the rage but these guys they were practical guys you know they they wanted to get around and they wanted to get around quickly they felt that bikes were just a little bit too slow to be used practically so they decided that they would motorize a bicycle and they would try and go for speed and maneuverability and the company even made bicycles for a while but they realized soon after that that wasn't their business their business was motorized bicycles or motorcycles and if you look at the early models you started these with pedals they looked so much more like bikes they had pedals on them and you would pedal to get that engine going now i told you i was going to tell you about that sound that we've heard twice already it is such a distinctive sound i've never heard anything like it there have been times when i'm walking around and i hear a harley and i look up in the sky because i think it's a plane that's how loud these things are but how did it get this distinct sound well supposedly the engine's pistons now the pistons are the things that go up and down and you guys are gonna see right now how little i know about being a mechanic and about cars and motorcycles and automobiles in general but the way these pistons are timed is that one fires this para on one revolution of the crankshaft and the other fires on the next revolution so like there's like this alternating sound that you hear when you hear it and and if you listened carefully you'll hear that switching and a crankshaft in espanol i know the word crankshaft but if you ask me to point it out on a vehicle i don't think i could equida collapse it's vehicle vehicle the h is relatively silent vehicle so yeah and this is because it's alternating explosions that happened in the engine that sounds pretty cool on paper but as i said before when they first started out their ads suicides show that the company prided itself they prided themselves on having quiet bikes bikes that didn't make a lot of noise one of their ads even said quiet and refined and those are not two words that you would associate with harley davidson not now at least and their their marketing was clear i mean they were going for upper-class people civilized men and women riding their bikes in fact one of their bikes one of their motorcycles was called the quiet gray gentleman gray because of its paint job and quiet because it was a quiet harley davidson the exact opposite of their marketing today now another distinctive feature of the harley-davidson motorcycle is the v-twin engine and be careful with the pronunciation there engine it was the very first one that was mounted to a frame in 1909 and these have been linked to harley's from the beginning since 1909 and they put that first v-twin engine in there and why do they call it v twin hasta quiego v porque para una ube twin gimelos they look the same but when i watched the documentary one of the harley oh i think it was his grandson uh said that well it was the perfect shape la forma perfecta think about the the way a motorcycle looks you have a little space there and well a v fits perfectly now i want to be clear on something here too i said you know that it's always been associated with harley davidson this v twin engine but they didn't necessarily invent it it's just become a part of their signature it was invented by uh gutleb daimler you guys know this and this was a little bit earlier this was in 1889 but those were not used on motorcycles yet they were used on boats they were also used on cars but they weren't used on motorcycles it wasn't until a man named glenn curtis came along and he has been credited with inventing that v-twin motorcycle engine which as i said before was in 1903. so harley davidson the company started to grow little by little it wasn't a huge boom like disney with his park disneyland which in the first six months was a huge success these guys built up slowly but surely step by step and i think that's still part of their philosophy today so they started by you know marketing to different people as i said before then they started marketing and looking at institutions such as the post office and the police department in fact cops if you remember uh these there's a very popular show in the united states i don't know if it was popular in spain and it was called chips california highway patrol and they rode around on harleys and i even remember the the police in new york city riding around on harley's now i didn't know it was a harley because as i said i know very little about this topic but it was a big bike it was a you know a solid sturdy bike that's a good word to describe harley-davidson's sturdy fuerte they were very popularized with different institutions in the united states including the the world wars where harley davidson and their motorcycles played a part in the war efforts so they always found a way to be useful not just cool and fun and i feel like this part comes in every episode and then the great depression hit that was in 1929 and this is a turning point i think in every business we've looked at in every episode the great depression had some kind of effect on what we were talking about in this case motorcycle companies were having a lot of trouble staying afloat como de timos montoyendo flotando almost motorcycle companies were no exception to the other companies that were struggling out there at that time people looked at motorcycles as luxury it was seen as more of a luxury as i said it wasn't a necessity and that led to their downfall so harley davidson and their competition they have a couple other which they would say is not their competition but people who ride bikes say harley is not the only one it's not the best one and as always this is a matter of personal preference as you know there's the indian motorcycle company which is a very famous one there's triumph as well but some say once you've ridden a harley you'll never ride those other ones but i know a friend who has a triumph who says once you ride a triumph why would you want to ride a harley but thankfully you know they were able to to fix things up and really to weather the storm i should say the indian motorcycle company and harley davidson both survived the great depression and as i said earlier due to these racing teams and the popularity of their wrecking crew and and all their racers they made their bikes very very popular there was a guy named joe petroli who broke the record the speed record on a harley davidson in daytona and this was in the 1930s and that brought a lot of attention to harley davidson as well so with every major success story every enterprise or business we look at every idea every single one has had its share of ups and downs as we say altivajos and now i'd like to take a look at some popular models or some maybe some models that were made popular because of hollywood celebrities or what have you now they they've been coming in 90 different models in eight different categories so 90 different models if you're a collector you've got a lot of stuff to collect well one of my favorite ones and i guess i'm a little bit biased cesgado is the fat boy why well because i'm a fat boy i identify with that harley davidson no i'm joking my cousin fran in almeria has a fat boy and just touching that thing you know that you are touching a mean machine and nobody knew that more than arnold when he used it in terminator 2. he rode the famous fat boy bike and if you remember the scene i think it was guns and roses with you could be mine the terminator flying down the street on his harley fat boy one of the most famous motorcycle movies is easy rider with jack nicholson also dennis hopper peter fonda and this was another one that popularized harley and well motorcycle culture in general and the one in this movie was called a chopper again please forgive me if i get them wrong i look these up but i know very little about the different models the next movie is pulp fiction in 1986 is harley davidson fxr super glide is the name of the model and that was the one that we could see in pulp fiction another one which just has the name in the title ghost rider and this one uses a harley davidson chopper as well which is a very popular one the chopper if you guys know there's a popular tv show called the oc choppers it's uh where they take harley davidsons and they customize them and this is located a stone's throw from my dad's house in new york state oc stands for orange county so the orange county choppers and it's a place where they take harleys and they custom make them so why do they call them choppers good question now chopper is another word for a helicopter well they were called choppers because after the war there were a lot of surplus bikes i think you say eccentria and so they were big they were bulky and you know people wanted them but they said i can't drive around with this huge military bike so they started to chop it up cortarlo and they would cut extra pieces off and personalize it and from there you got the word chopper now i always thought because it sounded like a helicopter and now you know harley davidsons can be as unique as the rider they come in all different sizes and styles and then you can customize it to your liking and we were talking about movies and and bikes and pop culture well uh supposedly the first movie featuring a harley davidson was called the wild one with marlon brando and this is where harley davidson had its first feature big screen performance and that was in 1953. now you want to know the funny part marlon brando wasn't the one riding the harley no he was riding a triumph which as i said before is harley's competition it was the bad guy the guy in the rival gang he was an actor lee marvin who played the role he was the one who was riding the harley all these movies and so many more have popularized not just harley davidson but this biker culture and as i said in the beginning of the episode anybody anywhere in the world can be a biker you just have to like a little adventure the open road the purr of the engine and what's not to like that sounds like a great plan to me i just am a little bit scared of motorcycles personally yeah well they go fast and if you fall off i don't even want to think about it so maybe that's what it is it's not that i don't like motorcycles i respect them i fear them but what i've realized doing this episode is that they are truly an amazing invention now we have to wrap up this show over here but just remember that if you guys are patrons then you'll have access to bonus content every week you can also get access to pdfs with all the vocabulary now that's over 300 words and expressions per episode you can even get weekly classes and monthly classes with me if you want to find out more you can go over to patreon.com slash alberto alonso and take a look at all the different options thank you thank you thank you to all of you guys who support me and the work i do if you enjoy this work and you want to be a part of our curious community join us on patreon again it's patreon.com alberto alonso and i'd like to send a shout out to all my super duper students tony roberto jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and loles and don't forget about my interstellar students carmen diego pilar and diana you guys rock thank you so much and we've got so much to celebrate our community is constantly growing just recently we reached a hundred patrons so thank you thank you thank you for growing with me it's a pleasure to have you all as students and i hope we continue to grow together to another hundred let's make a toast in the bonus part of today's show we're gonna look at the battle between triumph and harley davidson we'll also take a look at apparel and merchandising and how that plays a very important role in harley-davidson also we're going to talk about how a knockoff una copia from japan possibly saved harley-davidson during the second world war we'll also take a look at the hell's angels parts of a bike and some of the biggest motorcycle events in the world all that and much more in the bonus part of today's fyi you