Post by wheelbender6 on Jun 14, 2018 21:07:11 GMT -5
I suspect that there are many stories about that name, but I found this one on TopSpeed.
www.topspeed.com/motorcycles/motorcycle-news/why-is-a-harley-called-a-hog-ar181162.html
"This is a fun little story that takes us back to Marion, Indiana, in 1920. World War I was over and motorcycle racing was emerging as a popular new sport. Having dominated the podium at the inaugural dirt-track race that had taken place on Memorial Day of the previous year, Harley-Davidson was eager to go for a repeat performance with it’s “Wrecking Crew” team. Yes, they were the original “Wrecking Crew.”
A rider named Ray Weishaar adopted a young pig from one of the local farmers just before the races, named it Johnny, and it became the team mascot. Weishaar beat the field for yet another first-place finish for the MoCo and upon winning, he picked up the pig and rode it around the track on his victory lap. That set up a short-lived tradition of taking Johnny for a victory lap every time a Wrecking Crew member won a race. One of those winning moments is frozen in time in one of the most iconic pictures of the era when Weishaar offered Johnny a victory sip of his Coca-Cola, a product fairly new under the sun at the time and with a much better ingredients list than nowadays, I’m told.
After dominating the field time after time, race fans and some in the media began to informally refer to the team as the "Harley Hogs," whether it be for Johnny’s participation or the media calling the team hogs for “hogging” the first-place finishes. However, the "Wrecking Crew" name was the one that persevered over time. Even as the “Harley Hogs” nickname faded on the racetrack, it persevered as a slang term for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. So ensconced in culture was the name that the 3rd Edition of the Dictionary of American Slang even contains an entry for "hog" as being a "1960s motorcycle or motorcyclist" with a following entry mentioning Harley-Davidson by name.
Of course, in more modern times the factory uses the word as an acronym for its in-house bike club, the Harley Owners Group, as well as its official market name. As for the Wrecking Crew, Indian Motorcycle took that label in the ’50s with its dominant race team, and it was been pulled out of retirement again for the 2017 Indian Flat Track Racing team that proved to be more than the rest of the world could handle right out of the gate in its freshman year after a long hiatus from the sport."
www.topspeed.com/motorcycles/motorcycle-news/why-is-a-harley-called-a-hog-ar181162.html
"This is a fun little story that takes us back to Marion, Indiana, in 1920. World War I was over and motorcycle racing was emerging as a popular new sport. Having dominated the podium at the inaugural dirt-track race that had taken place on Memorial Day of the previous year, Harley-Davidson was eager to go for a repeat performance with it’s “Wrecking Crew” team. Yes, they were the original “Wrecking Crew.”
A rider named Ray Weishaar adopted a young pig from one of the local farmers just before the races, named it Johnny, and it became the team mascot. Weishaar beat the field for yet another first-place finish for the MoCo and upon winning, he picked up the pig and rode it around the track on his victory lap. That set up a short-lived tradition of taking Johnny for a victory lap every time a Wrecking Crew member won a race. One of those winning moments is frozen in time in one of the most iconic pictures of the era when Weishaar offered Johnny a victory sip of his Coca-Cola, a product fairly new under the sun at the time and with a much better ingredients list than nowadays, I’m told.
After dominating the field time after time, race fans and some in the media began to informally refer to the team as the "Harley Hogs," whether it be for Johnny’s participation or the media calling the team hogs for “hogging” the first-place finishes. However, the "Wrecking Crew" name was the one that persevered over time. Even as the “Harley Hogs” nickname faded on the racetrack, it persevered as a slang term for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. So ensconced in culture was the name that the 3rd Edition of the Dictionary of American Slang even contains an entry for "hog" as being a "1960s motorcycle or motorcyclist" with a following entry mentioning Harley-Davidson by name.
Of course, in more modern times the factory uses the word as an acronym for its in-house bike club, the Harley Owners Group, as well as its official market name. As for the Wrecking Crew, Indian Motorcycle took that label in the ’50s with its dominant race team, and it was been pulled out of retirement again for the 2017 Indian Flat Track Racing team that proved to be more than the rest of the world could handle right out of the gate in its freshman year after a long hiatus from the sport."
