Be Careful Correcting Those Mistakes

[Site Man]

OLD FORUM POSTS

Posted by Cam on January 19, 2002

I had a conversation a while back at a bike show with the publisher of The Motorcyclist's Post. He was telling me about the Harley Davidson Cafe in Hollywood, and how the owner was showing him around the place. One of his prized posessions was an original Indian dealership sign, from a dealership someplace in the midwest, a big painted metal sign with the original exposed neon and so forth. The owner bragged that he had paid $75,000 for the sign from an antique dealer. The publisher said, "Gee, that's a pile of money... What would you have paid for a REAL one?" He then pointed out to the now stuttering and indignant owner that Indian never called its product a motorcycle - on all it's literature and ads, the word is spelled MOTOCYCLE.

My first thought was - what if this was an example of a sign man correcting what he assumed to be a mistake? I can imagine the scene - a sign shop gets an order for a big neon and metal sign. The pattern maker looks at the copy and says, well look, these ejits can't even spell "motorcycle", and adds a letter R. The sign gets made and the dealer doesn't want to pay for a correction (it would involve re-bending the neon) so it goes up as-is with the "mistake" in place.

75 years and $75,000 later, someone notices, and calls its authenticity into question. Interesting.

Kent Smith

Would be interesting to find out if there are other signs from the same era or plant and what the spelling is there. I had an uncle who was an Indian fanatic but I had forgotten they were motocycles. What about the new metamorphosis of the Indian...which is it? I made the mistake once of changing a word ending in in' instead of ing...can't remember the word but I had to change it back and correct the spacing too.

Cam

I checked Indian's website and they use the "R".

I can imagine this kind of mistake happening; e've all corrected things in spelling, etc. that we get from clients. Still, I'd love to know if the sign in the HD cafe is a fake, or an actual dealership sign with a mistake.