Not everything that goes through the US Patent Office makes it to the production line, but a forward-thinking William S Harley was thinking about rear suspension before 1918. I’ve long harboured the idea that a shock absorber up the frame’s backbone would be a clever solution when recreating the lines of a hardtail with suspension, and while Harley used his for the control of rebound – the main suspension being a looped leafspring in those pre-hydraulic times – I still reckon it’d work.
