SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.- A new exhibition, Two wheeled warriors: a history of Harley-Davidson in Australia, is currently on view at the Powerhouse Museum. Marlon Brando. Peter Fonda. Dot Golding. Just three of the names who have helped Harley-Davidson become a part of Australia's cultural history. It was Brando who established "the Harley look" - biceps-enhancing T-shirt, jeans, leather jacket - when he portrayed the renegade bikie gang leader in the controversial 1954 movie The Wild One. And Fonda who pioneered the brand's association with affluent middle-class rebellion when he set off to look for America through a haze of drugs in Easy Rider. More than 20 classic motorcycles are on display - from a 1930 Peashooter racing bike to the $32,000 V-Rod ridden by Keanu Reeves in the forthcoming Matrix 2 . Curator Anni Turnbull says Harleys have made a unique contribution to our popular culture, our fashion and our notions of rebellion.

"There's an incredible divide between the people who love Harleys and the rest of the world, who dump on them," says Turnbull. No other motoring manufacturer, she says, has managed to "perpetuate a legend" in the same way - not even Ferrari. "Harley-Davidson is one of the most recognized brand names in the world along with Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Disneyland. But no-one tattoos their names on their bodies."

The first Harley-Davidsons were imported into Australia in 1912, nine years after the Davidson brothers, with their friend Bill Harley, began manufacture in a Milwaukee shed.

The image of the bikie gang member living outside society's conventions was established when Brando rode into town in The Wild One, and forever associated with Harley-Davidson, though Brando rode a Triumph in the film (it was Lee Marvin who rode the Harley). Bizarrely, Harleys became symbols both of respectability and rebellion. The image became even more complicated after Easy Rider in 1969. Fonda's character, a rich kid riding a customized Harley, was the forerunner of the yuppies who turned to Harleys when the stock market crashed in the late 1980s. Harley-Davidson's genius, says Turnbull, is to sell the concept of rebellion to these two different markets.