Larry Coleman (motorcyclist)
Larry Coleman is the most successful sidecar roadracer in the United States, winning three American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) national championships ('76, '77, '79), and a land-speed record holder in sidecar divisions. He was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2010. Stationed in Germany with the military in the late 1960s, Coleman in fall of 1968 founded a motorcycle club with fellow US soldiers, named "Bones MC", after a MAD magazine cartoon with a cigarette in a skeleton hand. The club, originally based at Frankfurt, predates the first German charter of the Hells Angels, founded 1973 in Hamburg, by several years. The Bones also accepted German members, expanded to Mannheim and other cities, and became the largest MC in Germany. With US members returning after their service, Germans took over, and the Bones MC turned into an "outlaw motorcycle club", until in 1999 16 of the 21 chapters merged ("patch-over") with the smaller Hells Angels MC of Germany. Watching the 1969 German motorcycle Grand Prix at Hockenheimring, Coleman got hooked to sidecars and sidecar racing, riding a BMW R69S with sidecar. Upon returning to the States, Coleman raced a Kawasaki H1 Mach III 500cc sidecar with passenger Wendell