The success of Ian Barry's Falcon Motorcycles owes a lot to that most powerful of forces: nostalgia. Each model, though a unique, custom-built creation, is inspired by the bikes of yesteryear—sometimes even incorporating modified vintage engines and parts. His in-production White Falcon, for example, uses a "squish" combustion engine built by Velocette in 1967—one of only seven in existence—which is the same engine owned by Arthur Lavington, the last man to race a Velocette in a GP. The engine of his custom Bullet started as a derelict Triumph Thunderbird engine, the same engine as in the Triumph Thunderbird rode by Marlon Brando in The Wild One. That this has proven so appealing to Barry's burgeoning customer-base attests to the fact that, whether you see it as a symbol of sporting prowess, anarchic chaos, or youthful freedom, the motorcycle has a powerful grip on our cultural psyche. Below we've picked a few of the moments that explain why.

Would a bike be a bike without Brando? Would Brando be Brando without a bike? In this, the signature moment for both, the method actor goes the full Peter Marino as a hoard of biker gangs descend upon a small town bringing muscular mayhem in Laslo Benedik’s classic.

Hunter S. Thompson’s first published book is a brutal ballad to a notorious subculture during its hell-raising heyday. Though he was beaten to a pulp on at least one occasion by the subjects of his study, the book made Thompson a megastar and afforded him enough money to buy his beloved Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colorado.

Robert M Pirsig’s classic existentialist manual about a father and his son on the road to self-discovery from Minnesota to California, atop a beat-up BMW bike.

Freewheeling fatalism was on full display when the platinum-mulleted Kiefer Sutherland and his vampiric Lost Boys raced their bikes along the beach beneath the Santa Cruz pier, screeching right up to the edge of a cliff.

Richard Prince knows a good American icon when he finds it. His photo celebration of biker chicks, Girlfriends, tells us everything we need to know about the fetishistic appeal of hanging on to the back of a bike.

Similarly, Christopher Nolan’s box office-shattering Batman sequel ends with Christian Bale fleeing the authorities (pursuing him for crimes he did not commit) on a particularly meaty bat bike.