Ray’s clockwork Harley
“Most things American and all things Harley-Davidson.” These are the succinctly-stated cultural passions of Ray Cooper from Liverpool, and they manifest themselves in various forms, ranging from Hollywood films to Wild West re-enactments and, of course, motorcycles. “My ideal would be a Panhead, if I’m being perfectly honest,” he reflects, “but people who own Panheads want lots of money for them, so a while ago I thought, what can I get that’ll be unusual?”
Ray, 62, already owned an Evo-engined 1996 FLH tourer, which he bought in 1998 because his wife thought they should own at least one bike that was reasonably reliable. She had a point – the last time that I rode one of Ray’s motorcycles, during the autumn of 2007, he was running a 1965 XLCH Sportster, a genuinely exciting but thoroughly ill-tempered machine, which moved me to write that it was “destined to 1 be e ridden d io like it had h just been stolen.”
The ‘act of faith ’ that caused Ray to buy his Sportster (which he’s now sold , incidentally ) was apparently repeated when he first heard about this Model G Servi-Car. Initially offered as a straight swap
