Easy Rider Captain America Harley-Davidson (1969)

The Captain America chopper from Easy Rider is one of the most recognisable motorcycles in cinema. Built around Harley-Davidson Panhead hardware and transformed into a long, raked, stars-and-stripes chopper, it became inseparable from the 1969 film’s image of freedom, rebellion and late-1960s counterculture.

Its history is also tangled and fascinating. Peter Fonda later acknowledged the role of Cliff Vaughs, with Ben Hardy involved in building the film bikes, and the fate of the original machines has been the subject of theft, reconstruction, replicas and provenance disputes. That uncertainty has only added to the bike’s legend: it is both a motorcycle and a cultural artefact.