OUR HISTORY
Welcome to Steelwings - the original Harley Davidson family motorcycle club in South Africa.
We are a 35-year-old club which started in 1991 by a pack of guys filled with the restlessness to journey, ride their Harley's and have fun as brothers.
The original brothers at arms were Niall Bernic, Hilton Nerwich, Mike Barbaglia, Kenny Abrams, Richard Gordon and Peter Edel.
In 1989 Niall Bernic and Mike Marbaglia were travelling to the States regularly buying Harley Davidsons to sell in South Africa. On one of their trips in 1990 Niall Bernic came across a shirt that had a logo on it which said "Wings of Steel", which he bought to wear in Johannesburg. On the same trip at Daytona bike week, Niall went to Harley Davidson who had a stand there, and approached them to start a Hog / Harley Davidson dealership in South Africa. Due to the times Harley had declined, so Niall came back to South Africa with that same shirt and showed his good friend and house mate, Michael Judas, who owned an advertising agency.
As Niall loved the shirt so much, he had asked his good friend to create a patch using the wings of steel.
As an inspiration, at a cost of R1500 which in those days was quite a sum of money, never less Michael came back with the idea of the motorbike in the middle and using what is loved by all, "Steelwings", on the top rocker. They loved it so much that in early of 1991 the first patch was embroided and put on a jacket and simultaneously formed the first membership of the club.
They drew up the first constitution along with the founders, interestingly when the first constitution was drawn up, they had used the AA constitution as the template to create Steelwings first constitution. The reason for this was they had no experience in drawing up a motorcycle constitution, and Niall had a boma at Kyalami racetrack which in those days was owned by the AA, so Niall politely asked the AA if he could use their constitution in order to draw up Steelwings, which they obliged. Along with 35 years of history it has been built, corrected and improved to the standard it is today.
To have a giggle... in 1992 Niall wore his cut to England and went to a ralley in London, to which some idiot asked him if he had ridden all the way to England? To which Niall laughed and replied "No.! As if that Harley could make it...!"
Steelwings started by doing rides all over the country and world, they hosted the Miss Harley competitions in Pretoria at a club called Jaquilines, raised funds by supporting big corporate events to initialize company products, company launches, support events, and raise money for charity. Examples of such companies were Vodacom, Cell C, Spur and Nashua.
By 1995 Steelwings JHB had members from Johannesburg to Pretoria, over200 members strong and thus in 1999 they decided to open a chapter in Pretoria.
Since there were so many members from Pretoria which had to often ride to JHB for Sunday rides which filled the roads with bikes.
Stan Shilla was noted as the Pretoria original and first president of Pretoria.
This passion became an adventure that today is filled with
great history, memories, stories that will never be
forgotten, and millions of kilometers amongst the members.
With adventures across the world. A journey of passion
that formed a club into what it is known by many today.
A club that has, grown so much so that it has members made
up of brothers and sisters across South Africa and abroad.