Harley-Davidson UMG: The Police Bike Built to Beat Indian in New York
Harley-Davidson built the UMG for one very specific job: convince the New York Police Department to give up Indian motorcycles. Since the inception of the NYPD Motor-Cycle Squad in 1911, New York had used Indians, and by the late 1930s the Indian Chief was the motorcycle Harley had to beat.
That makes the UMG one of Harley-Davidson’s more unusual police motorcycles. It was not just a standard U-series flathead with police equipment bolted on. Harley built it to answer New York’s Indian-based expectations, right down to the controls, ignition system, and paint.
Indian’s Hold on the NYPD Motor-Cycle Squad
For a city police department, a motorcycle was not judged only by horsepower or price. Officers had to trust it in traffic, mechanics had to keep it working, and city buyers had to believe the supplier could support the fleet. Indian had already earned a strong reputation in police work, from large-department patrol machines to earlier Indian law-enforcement machines built around quick response and daily duty.
By 1937, Harley-Davidson had spent years trying to grow its police business. The UMG fits into Harley’s broader 1930s police-bike push, but it went further than a normal police-package motorcycle. Instead of asking NYPD officers to adapt to a conventional Harley layout, the company built a motorcycle that deliberately felt closer to the Indian Chief they already knew.
A Harley Built to Feel Like an Indian
The basic motorcycle was Harley-Davidson underneath. The UMG used a 74-cubic-inch U-series side-valve V-twin mated to a three-speed transmission. That put it in the same broad working class as Harley’s big flatheads, but the details around the engine and chassis made the UMG stand apart from an ordinary Model U.
In the 1937 NYPD comparison photo, the Indian Chief is on the left and the Harley-Davidson UMG is on the right. Harley’s purpose is obvious. The company was not merely offering New York a different motorcycle; it was trying to remove as many objections as possible by giving the department a Harley that copied the practical habits of the Indian.
Magneto, Generator, and Batteryless Reliability
One of the biggest departures from a regular Harley police machine was the ignition system. The UMG used magneto ignition coupled to a generator, a batteryless arrangement intended to satisfy an NYPD reliability requirement. The idea was simple: if the motorcycle did not depend on a battery for ignition, there was one less failure point to strand an officer.
The engine detail photo shows that change clearly. There is no normal Harley timer in the place where a rider would expect to see one on a standard Harley flathead. That absence is one of the easiest ways to understand how seriously Harley took the NYPD specification. This was a purpose-built attempt to match what New York wanted, not just a catalog police model with different paint.
Reversed Controls and Indian Red Paint
The UMG’s controls followed the same logic. Harley reversed the layout so the hand shifter was mounted on the right side of the tank, the throttle was on the left, and the spark advance was on the right. Harley even reversed the action of the foot clutch so it engaged when the lever was rocked backward.
Those changes made the UMG much more familiar to an Indian rider, but they also made it a strange machine by Harley standards. To complete the effect, the tanks and fenders were painted a dark red that was very close in spirit to Indian Red. The old saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery applies here: Harley-Davidson was trying to beat Indian by building a police motorcycle that acted and looked enough like one to make the switch easy.
Production, Survivors, and the Failed NYPD Bid
Harley-Davidson produced the UMG from 1937 to 1939, but production numbers are not firmly documented. Surviving accounts often estimate the run under or around 400 motorcycles, and that figure should be treated as an estimate rather than a verified factory total.
The meaning of the UMG name is also best handled carefully. The initials are often treated as a reference to the Model U base and the magneto-generator equipment, but surviving records do not appear to give a clean factory definition. What is clear is the job the motorcycle was built to do: compete directly with Indian for New York police work.
One of the best-known surviving examples has been displayed at Wheels Through Time in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. That surviving motorcycle helps explain why the UMG has become such an interesting footnote for Harley and police-motorcycle collectors. It was rare, highly specific, and built for a customer Harley badly wanted but could not win at the time.
What Happened After Indian
The UMG did not unseat Indian as the NYPD’s motorcycle of choice. Indian remained the department’s familiar supplier, and Harley’s Indian-like flathead quietly disappeared after its short production run. It was not until Indian’s decline in the early 1950s, and the years that followed, that Harley-Davidson finally became the common name on New York police motorcycles.
Harley eventually won the kind of police work it had chased in the 1930s, but not with this motorcycle. The UMG was a bold, almost stubborn attempt to build a Harley that could pass for an Indian in the eyes of New York officers, and its failure shows just how hard it can be to break a department’s loyalty to a proven service machine.