1. Harley-Davidson
Don’t laugh!
Harley-Davidson is the only major American motorcycle manufacturer that has ever had experience in producing a motocross bike albeit through the Italian Aermacchi that Harley once owned. The project began in 1975, and Harley actually produced decent machines and even supported a factory race team that included such motocross and off-road racing legends as “Rocket Rex” Staten and Bruce Ogilvie. In fact, Ogilvie teamed with another young racer destined to become an off-road racing legend, Larry Roeseler, to win the SCORE Baja 500 in 1975.
Harley-Davidson actually produced the MX-250 for sale to the public in 1978, but few machines ever left the factory before the company second-guessed itself and pulled out of the off-road market after only one year. Harley later sold Aermacchi, which became Cagiva, and Milwaukee never gave the hard-core off-road dirtbike world another thought…Well, almost never. Harley’s sportbike subsidiary, Buell Motorcycle Company, actually built prototype dirtbikes for testing around 2007, but the project never got very far.
Bottom line, though: It would be great to see a North American brand step up to build a competitive dirtbike, and for our money, it should be Polaris, or maybe Bombardier could revive its Can-Am brand.
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