The Wheel Deal: Warr's Harley-Davidson dealership

Elvis Presley rode one; so did those easy riders Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Brigitte Bardot loved hers back in the day, and now stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney have taken up the trend. What these figures have in common is a shared appreciation for the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, the iconic bike with the throaty growl that's been stealing hearts since the first one rolled out of a Milwaukee garage in 1903.
In Warr's, the Fulham fixture that's been selling these bikes since 1924, I'm faced with enough gleaming chrome to warrant sunglasses indoors, and the hard rock soundtrack only intensifies the compulsion to retrieve the Ray-Bans from my bag. I'm here to meet John Warr who represents the third generation to carry on the coolest family business I'll probably ever come across.
John's grandfather, Captain Frederick James Warr, opened the first Warr's shop on the King's Road after serving in the First World War. "Basically he started selling bicycles and went from there." When the shop was damaged in the Second World War, Warr's moved a small distance down the road.
"My father took over from him, up at that shop that used to be there," he says from our vantage point in the current premises, which John had built in 2000. "He carried on with that. I spent a bit of time racing, decided I ought to concentrate on the business and that's where I stepped in. Fortunately things evolved with Harley so we had a nice product to sell, and it just went from there."
Bikes really are in John's blood; he's Warr's managing director, chairman of the UK Harley-Davidson Dealers Association, director of both the Chelsea & Fulham and the Meridian Harley Owners Groups, as well as a regular participant in the annual London to Brighton Pioneer Run, which sees him gallantly riding the oldest Harley in his collection, a 1914 Silent Gray Fellow.
"I was in a family where everybody had bikes. We had them as kids and as a young boy you had a motorbike. My sons have got motorbikes now," he explains. "I went racing when I left school, and once you're in that you spend ten years wasting your life around racetracks immersed in the bike thing - right or wrong nothing else seems to really matter."
When he finally grew tired of the tracks, he returned to Fulham where Europe's oldest Harley-Davidson dealership was waiting. "The timing was right because when I came in Harley had redeveloped their bikes. They'd come back from the brink, they suddenly had a new team on board that were generating growth. The bikes were reliable, and they came out with some good price points and great designs. The heritage stuff came out and it kicked on that nostalgia thing," John says.
We take a tour of the showroom and come across an ancient model, tricked out with a brown leather seat, wicker basket and sleek paint job. "That one up there, that's from 1915," John says, pointing to what he tells me is a coveted Silent Gray Fellow.
While wicker is absent from the vast collection of newer models, they share similarities with their granddaddy. The Screamin' Eagle, Fat Bob, Street Bob, the Road King, the Bobber - they have snappier names than the elderly guy but their physique is unmistakably related. It's not just the body shape that distinguishes the Harley-Davidson from other bikes. "They've got the V-twin engine," John tells me. "It's a nice engine to ride." It was 100 years ago that Harley-Davidson introduced its first V-twin powered motorcycle, and they've stuck to it ever since.
"It's like driving, if you like, a V-8 car," explains John. "There's no other bike really that's got that. It's quite a friendly power, it's quite a nice bike to ride." John isn't the only one who thinks so, and he says he gets men and women of all ages coming in to buy or rent them. "You get a lot of fathers and sons and brothers who pass that gene through the family. You get people who want to give up their day job for a bit of adventure so they buy a bike and go around Europe. Then you get someone from the Royal Family suddenly turn up. The great thing about biking is it's a real leveller."
Some Harley riders like to set off on their own, while others prefer to travel in packs. And real die-hards, like John, will take it either way. "Two weeks' time I'm off down the south of France with a group for the St Tropez rally. Next year I'm doing the typical Alaska to Argentina thing." "You call that typical?" I squeal. "Well there seems to be a lot of people doing it," he laughs. "I'm doing that next spring, 20,000 miles. I've allowed myself 12 weeks. I'm probably going to do it on an old Harley - something that's reliable but old, maybe 1940s, a bit different but not too flash, quite rugged."
If Warr's were a person, it would be in a nursing home, but it's alive and kicking at 85. Will future generations of Warrs keep it up? John puts no pressure on his kids, but they may have already been bitten by the biking bug. "No matter what my sons do - one's six and one's 14 - I always try and make sure they do something creative, or that they can fix... One of them's really into it already," he grins. "The youngest one... he's a petrol-head."

611 King's Road, Fulham SW6 2EL
020 7736 2934; www.warrs.com

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