Old Hickory, Tennessee, a Nashville neighborhood named in honor of former US President, Andrew Jackson, is the location of this unusual bike. This is a 1964 Harley-Davidson Scat and it’s listed on eBay for $2,200. There are no bids so far, there are also no Make Offer or Buy It Now tabs so you’ll have to send the seller a message if you have a lower offer. Apparently, $2,200 is too much or it would be sold already.
The Harley-Davidson Scat was made between 1962 and 1965 and is usually, generically, referred to as a member of the Harley-Davidson Hummer family. After WWII, as a part of its war reparations, Germany’s DKW had to give up the drawings for its RT 125 so US-based Harley-Davidson got them as did the United Kingdom for its BSA Bantam. The Soviet Union even grabbed the tooling for its MMZ M-1A Moskva. Harley-Davidson came out with the DKW-based 125 in 1948, the Model 165 replaced the 125 in 1953 with a bigger engine, and the Hummer was introduced in 1955.
The Harley-Davidson Hummer was a 125 cc two-stroke, single-cylinder motorcycle with 3.5 hp and it was named after the country’s leading Harley two-stroke salesman, Dean Hummer of Omaha, Nebraska! Cool trivia, eh? Throw that one out at the next antique motorcycle show and see if anyone knows how the Harley Hummer got its name.
This Scat was last registered in 1972 so it’ll need to be gone through, but that’s half the fun of owning a decades old motorcycle, getting things working like new again. The seller does mention that it was last ridden a year ago and has been in storage since, so it shouldn’t be a grueling task to get it on the road again. The 220-pound Scat was a “dual-purpose” bike with on/off road capabilities. It had a higher front fender, knobby tires, higher handlebars, softer springs on the seat, a scrambler-type higher exhaust pipe, and as an option you could get the off-road Harley-Davidson Ranger‘s low final-drive gearing. I don’t know if this bike has that option or not. I wonder if the seller is basing the asking price on the cache or the popularity of Harley-Davidson motorcycles?
Although this Scat sounds like it would be running in no time, it’ll need a fair amount of work to restore it if a person wanted to go that route. If you’re a Harley fan, are you a fan of these small foreign-based models? And if so, is this one worth the asking price?
If anyone is seriously interested, would be happy to go check it out, I live in the next neighborhood over.
Aren’t all Harley Davidsons scat?!
Coming from Milwaukee, I had heard of the Hummer, not so much the Scat name, but you wouldn’t be caught dead on this in Milwaukee in the ’60’s. Milwaukee was a very conservative city, proud of the Harley ( the big ones) and you never saw these. Didn’t matter where it came from, it just wasn’t American. (British bikes were ok, though) I suppose it would make a fun little dirt bike, if you could get parts. ( and afford them) Cool piece of history, though.
I had one of these when I was a teenager. It was a 175 cc 2-stroke with 10 hp and a three speed transmission. Low on power but a very cool little bike. The scat had 18″ rims with knobby tires, and its street counterpart called the “Pacer” had 16″ rims, street tires and regular street fenders. This one is missing its chain guard, special tail light and housing assembly, the muffler baffles and the solo seat (the seat that’s on it appears to have come from a Pacer). If the owner still has these hard to find parts that’s a plus, but this thing is still a bit overpriced. As we all know, rare doesn’t always equate to valuable.
Why is it that Ebay allows this bike (which is now sold/gone already) to be listed in Harley-Davidson / other ……but if you click other to see other Harley Davidson, you get taken to the main listing of all HDs and there is no subsection for others?
Ebay Motors searching used to be so much better.
I owned one of these in 1970 in New Mexico-Mine was black with chrome roll bars on front-I thought I was James Dean! Cool