Easy Rider Harley eyes world record auction price... the authentic one this time

The Harley-Davidson star of iconic cult classic movie Easy Rider is being primed to go up for auction where its anticipated sale price is expected to make it the most valuable motorcycle on the planet.

Released in 1969, Easy Rider starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as bikers traversing the United States to complete a drugs deal. However, it was their Harley-Davidson - complete with Stars and Stripes painted on the fuel tank - that encapsulated the film’s freewheeling spirit.

Decades on and the image of the bikes and their iconography that typified the time in the Oscar-winning film was shot, endures to the extent that the last remaining example (of two) is up for auction and expected to fetch a sizeable fee, being listed at $300,000.

This is quite a bit less than the $1.35million paid in 2014 for an ‘authentic’ Captain America bike, though this was reversed when it became apparent the machine was not quite as genuine as it had been advertised as. On that occasion, owner Dan Haggerty - who starred in the film - said the bike was the one ‘destroyed’ in the film’s final scene and had been painstakingly rebuilt, but this turned out to be false.

This time, however, the motorcycle on offer is a genuine Harley-Davidson used in the film shoot

“It represents a longing for a simpler life, one of adventure and the open road,” a spokesperson for the sale told This is Money. “It would grace any automotive collection be it private or in a museum.”

“We are satisfied that this bike is the one rebuilt after its crash and thus the only surviving bike of the four originally purchased for the film.”