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Harley-Davidson Marbled Beauty Plays the Subtle Terminator Card And It Works

Believe it or not, it’s been 31 years since Terminator 2 hit theaters, forever changing one of the movie industry’s most prolific genres. It remains to this day a reference point for robot-centered sci-fi movies, and perhaps the best of all Terminator movies ever made.
Harley-Davidson Marbled Beauty 8 photos
Photo: Bundnerbike
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The movie made popular (once again) several concepts that have been used in moviemaking before, including time travel, a robot-driven apocalypse, and an unlikely friendship between man and machine.

Terminator 2 was such a big project back in its day that a number of high-profile companies wanted to get involved, on a more or less official level. You can all remember the Persol or Matsuda glasses worn by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, or the flood of Subway references featured throughout.

But perhaps the biggest impact an actual real-world product had on the movie and its viewers was the presence of a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy in one of the most intense scenes of the flick, the chase in the Los Angeles Bull Creek.

Having debuted a year earlier with its iconic solid-cast disc wheels, shotgun exhausts, and flared fenders, T2 was the bike’s first public outing in such a high-profile setting. And although unprovable in the real sense, the movie probably contributed a lot to the bike model’s success.

We can see that in the custom industry too, which has its shares of Terminator-referenced Fat Boys. The one we stumbled upon most recently is based on a 2015 Fat Boy, and was put together as the Marbled Beauty by Swiss custom garage Bundnerbike.

Harley\-Davidson Marbled Beauty
Photo: Bundnerbike
Now, this thing is not your usual Terminator 2 custom, with obvious, physical throwbacks to the flick, but a ride that will put a “nonchalant ‘I'll be back’ on your lips,” as the shop says. That’s quite a subtle connection to the Fat Boy’s most famous movie appearance, one that easily has you imagine the T-800 evading a massive truck on the back of this thing.

Sadly, this being an older Fat Boy build by Bundnerbike we lack many of the details we’re used to, the ones that paint a rather exact picture of the modifications made to the stock machine. But that doesn’t rob the finished product of its appeal in the slightest.

The wheels of the custom bike are of course different than the stock ones, although their exact dimensions are not known. They are backed by Brembo braking hardware and, at the front, we get an aftermarket Ohlins fork that helps bring more length and less height to the ride.

A custom headlight in between the fork’s arms gives the Fat Boy a rather futuristic face. Higher up, the handlebar has been replaced as well with a longer piece of undisclosed provenance and holding an integrated speedometer and LED turn lights – the same kind of lightning system was chosen for the rear as well.

The engine seems to be the one the Fat Boy originally had on, only it now breathes by means of a chrome-plated exhaust system.

The price of the Harley-Davidson Marbled Beauty is a matter between the bike’s builder and the customer who had it made. Just to give you an idea though, consider a 2015 Fat Boy can be had, used, for over $15,000 in the best of conditions. A 1991 bike of the same breed, on the other hand, goes for about three times less than that.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
Daniel Patrascu profile photo

Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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