The oldest motorcycle brand in America is not Harley-Davidson or Indian – Jalopnik

Harley-Davidson holds a special place in the history of American motorcycles for many reasons. One of those reasons is certainly the fact that the company is one of the oldest motorcycle brands in the country, having been around since 1903 – about two years after Indian Motorcycles was founded. Yes, Indian is older than Harley, but the company also folded decades after 1953, was revived from 1999 to 2003, and then rebooted when Polaris bought the brand in 2011. Harley and Indian have been bitter rivals from the start, once even responsible for a motorcycle war within a world war.

However, you will have to go a little further back than those well-known names to get to America’s oldest motorcycle brand. It emerged from the Waltham Manufacturing Company, which coincidentally chose a name that is now as fraught with racist undertones as it is Indian: Orient.

In any case, the origins of the Orient company began in 1893, when Charles H. Metz founded Waltham Manufacturing in Massachusetts to build bicycles. Now the company also had its own factory cycling team at the time and Metz came up with a unique machine to help. It was a tandem bicycle where the rider in the front provided the steering and the rider in the back controlled a small gas engine that powered the vehicle. The idea was to use the bike as a simple way to set the pace for the team during practice, without having to find another human to operate the pace bike pedal. But then Metz suddenly had an inspiration.

At a certain point, Metz realized that people would be interested in an electric bicycle as a regular means of transportation. With that in mind, he tried fitting gas engines to vehicles with different wheel arrangements before finally attaching one to a heavy Waltham bicycle. The engine itself was called an Aster, named after the company that built it. That said, the engine was a copy of the DeDion-Bouton unit that was popular at the time.

Metz began advertising the machine in 1899, which could lead to another first. He called the machine a “motorcycle” in the ad, and some people believe this was the first ever use of the term. The following year, on July 31, Metz introduced the Orient to the public with winning results – literally. The Orient competed in what is believed to be the first organized motorcycle speed event in the US, held at Boston’s Charles River Race Park, and defeated all visitors to claim victory. Fortunately, at the time, participants did not have to worry about lost Teslas driving onto the track during a motorcycle race.

Metz’s motorcycle had a 2-horsepower engine that could deliver about 130 mpg, and with its 5-gallon fuel tank it had a range of about 100 miles. However, the price was a bit high. The Orient-Aster started at $250, while the average production wage (for adult males) was about $11.16 per week. This paved the way for Metz’s next motorcycle movement.

Metz’s role at Waltham Manufacturing ended in 1902 after a falling out with the company’s investors. However, it didn’t seem to affect his passion for motorcycles as he went on to build and sell his own bikes before financial problems led him to merge with another small motorcycle manufacturer called Marsh.

Marsh & Metz had its share of success with the introduction of one of the first V-twin motorcycle engines, but it also had its share of economic difficulties. Records are inconsistent, but the company went bankrupt between 1913 and 1923.

For Metz, however, it was just an opportunity to shift his focus from two to four wheels. It appears that without Metz, Waltham Manufacturing would have continued to operate and develop its own cars, but once again faced a problematic economy. Then the bank that managed Waltham’s mortgage asked Metz to come back and make things right. He succeeded temporarily with another of his brilliant ideas.

Waltham’s plan was to make cars affordable by selling them in a series of 14 separate parts kits that could be purchased one by one and then assembled at home. Not only did this reduce the final cost of cars, it also provided an early way to buy in installments rather than paying the full price upfront. In a sense, Metz can also be considered the inventor of car payments. On the other hand, with 1 in 5 new car buyers having a monthly payment of $1,000, people may not be so grateful.