What Was Mickey Rourke’s Bike In Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man?

Compared to most actors, Mickey Rourke has had quite an unorthodox entertainment journey. After gaining some traction throughout the 1980s, he largely left the bright lights of Hollywood to pursue a professional boxing career in the early ’90s. One of his few acting gigs from the start of that decade was 1991’s the widely maligned “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.” Directed by Simon Wincer, the film follows Rourke as a man named Harley Davidson, who teams up with Robert Lee Edison, aka the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson), to keep their friend’s bar alive. Naturally, mayhem and hijinks ensue along the way.

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As the name of Rourke’s character suggests, he’s a motorcycle rider — specifically of Harleys. Throughout the movie, he rides a custom 1991 Harley-Davidson FXR, one of several classic Harleys that makes a great project bike. The movie bike was technically portrayed by two different bikes during filming. One was Rourke’s personal motorcycle, while the other was a replica built for the stunt scenes of the movie. The most notable difference came in the two engines, with Rourke’s model having a 98 ci engine and the stunt bike packing an 80 ci. They may not have gone down as the most famous movie motorcycles of all time, but they’re still nice bikes all the same.

As it turns out, Rourke just recently parted with his big screen ride.

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Mickey Rourke is one of many celebrities who ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Much like his contemporaries in Tinseltown, he has shared his love for the historic motorcycle manufacturer, but Rourke hasn’t been too devoted to his 1991 Harley FXR in recent years. Even though he held onto his “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man” bike — nicknamed “MIAMISTRONG” by the actor himself — for decades, as he shared in an October 2023 Instagram post, letting it go after so long wasn’t a particularly heartbreaking experience.

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“I am not really emotionally attached to the bike because i [sic] hated the movie we used it in,” Rourke wrote on Instagram. I loved working with Don Johnson but the director sucked and so did the writing of the script.” At the same time, Rourke said that he didn’t want to just toss the bike away. When he inevitably decided to part ways with it, he wanted it to go to the right person. So, he chose a friend of his to take it, who vowed never to sell the bike.

“Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man” doesn’t have a legacy as a big screen classic, but its good to know that one of its key pieces of imagery hasn’t been lost to time. Surely, Mickey Rourke’s custom 1991 Harley-Davidson FXR has plenty of rides left in it, and if it doesn’t, at least it’s with someone who appreciates its engineering and Hollywood legacy and will display it proudly.

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