Hunter S. Thompson’s Beautifully-Restored 1972 Husqvarna 360C Enduro Motorcycle For Sale On Bring A Trailer

If you’ve spent any time lurking on Bring a Trailer, you know the drill: mostly pristine air-cooled 911s, the occasional over-restored Bronco for $80,000, and the creeping middle-age realization that you’re one impulsive bid away from filling a barn with hardware you have no idea what to do with.

But every once in a while, a piece of genuine literary and mechanical history crawls out of the woodwork.

Right now, that unique Bring A Trailer piece is a 1972 Husqvarna 360C Enduro that was ordered by late gonzo journalist and writer Hunter S. Thompson.

Check out the listing on Bring A Trailer, where the current bid is sitting around $7,500.

To the uninitiated, Husqvarna—or “Husky”—is the Swedish powerhouse that defined off-road racing in the ’60s and ’70s. Before they were famous for orange Husqvarna chainsaws, they were the lightweight, two-stroke dominant force in motorcycles and dirt bikes that ended the era of heavy, plodding British four-strokes.

This specific bike is Swedish steel with a direct link to the Doctor of Gonzo himself—Hunter S. Thompson’s personal ride. It’s a piece of mid-century American history, with provenance from a cultural figure who was uniquely tied to outlaw motorcycle culture.

The listing even has the documentation to prove it, citing a June 1972 invoice from US Husqvarna importer and distributor, MED-International, to Nelson Brothers Motors of Oakland, California (a beloved former Bay Area motorcycle dealership). The paperwork confirms a wholesale price of $935 for a “1972 Model Husqvarna Enduro” that was “Shipped for Hunter S. Thompson.”

1972 was a busy year for Hunter S. Thompson

To understand this bike, you have to understand where Hunter’s head was at in the summer of 1972. It was an incredibly busy year for Thompson and his writing. In fact, the bike was bought in the peak of the storm.

He was embedded in the high-stakes, high-paranoia fever dream of the 1972 presidential campaign trail, documenting the slow-motion collapse of the American Dream in real-time. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had just hit the shelves in ’71, and by June ’72—the month this Husky was invoiced—Hunter was a man possessed, vibrating with the frantic energy of the McGovern campaign and the looming shadow of Richard Nixon. Just a few weeks later, on July 10-13, he’d be off to Miami Beach to cover the Democratic National Convention.

It’s kinda fun to imagine Hunter taking a rare, desperate break from the trail to retreat to Woody Creek, Colorado to rip around on this thing. He’d be clutching a Chivas and a Wild Turkey, maybe fire off some rounds, looking for any possible way to outrun the “huge bats” and political demons following him from the press pools.

There’s a pretty famous photo of Hunter riding a Penton motorcycle in 1976 at Owl Farm, but this Husky was the tool for the peak of the madness. The 360cc two-stroke engine provided the necessary torque to climb a vertical wall, serving as a vital mechanical escape valve while the world outside Owl Farm felt like a bad trip through a crumbling republic.

Hunter S. Thompson is synonymous with motorcycle culture

Hunter’s association with motorcycle culture was cemented forever with the 1966 publication of Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. It was a lurid, groundbreaking look at a California subculture that eventually saw him stomped by the very men he embedded with. But while that book painted a picture of grease-stained outlaws on heavy, lumbering Harleys, Hunter’s own mechanical tastes were far more refined and significantly more dangerous.

While this Husky was his tool for the Colorado dirt, he spent a lifetime obsessed with the mechanical terror of the Vincent Black Shadow. In his legendary piece Song of the Sausage Creature, he admitted, “I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a Vincent Black Shadow.” To Hunter, the Vincent was the “last word in hellacious two-wheelers”—a bike so fast and heavy that “if you rode it at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die.”

He even mythologized it in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, dreaming of a Vincent with “two thousand cubic inches… developing two hundred brake-horsepower… on a magnesium frame.” He knew the Vincent was the monster under the bed, but the Husqvarna was the scalpel. It represented the same brand Steve McQueen championed—rugged, uncompromising, and capable of finding “The Edge.”

Thompson’s most enduring motorcycle philosophy comes from the postscript of Hell’s Angels, where he describes the high-speed pursuit of those limits on cool night rides around San Francisco:

“The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others—the living—are those who settled for their reliance on the edge of the razor and the control of the machine… But the Edge is still out there. Or maybe it’s in. They told me that, too—but I didn’t believe it.”

The Machine: 1972 Husqvarna 360C Enduro

The 360C (Competition) was essentially a motocross bike that someone at the factory decided should probably have a headlight and a license plate holder—mostly for legal deniability. It was built for the kind of riding where “if you’re not falling, you’re not trying.”

The Specs for the Spec-Heads:

The engine is a 360cc two-stroke single.

It’s the kind of engine that sounds like a chainsaw having a panic attack and delivers a power band that hits like a freight train.

The transmission is a five-speed wide-ratio gearbox.

This was designed for the “Enduro” life—perfect for high-speed desert runs or crawling through the Colorado brush when you’re being chased by imaginary (or real) demons.

The history is well documented.

Yellowed, fraying paper indicates it shipped new in June 1972 to Nelson Brothers Motors in Oakland, specifically for Hunter. The invoice (Serial No. SI-2447) is right there in the gallery listing a wholesale price of $935.

The bike has been significantly overhauled.

It underwent a half-year restoration by vintage Husky guru John Lefevre of San Marco, California. We’re talking powder-coated red fuel tank, silver frame, and a rebuilt 32mm Bing carburetor that breathes exactly the way it did when Hunter first kicked it over.

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This thing is awesome, and if I weren’t trying to buy a house in Los Angeles right now without drawing down from my retirement nest egg, I’d be all-in. Hell, I might even have to reconsider the house, because I want this thing just that badly. Bonus points for the fact it’s in the Los Angeles suburb of West Hills, which makes transportation easy.

Why It Matters

I’ve had Hunter on my mind a lot lately. I think it’s just a sign of the times and the level of cultural discourse in the country. In a world full of Nixonian rot, the Husqvarna was a “voter-education project” with two wheels and a high-mount expansion chamber.

I wrote about this over at my Substack, Wenerd’s World, recently—the futile trap of asking “What would Hunter S. Thompson say?” about our current political rot. Personally, I believe asking that question is a ghost story we tell ourselves to feel better.

This bike is the antidote to that projecting; it’s a reminder of the real-world stuff the man actually did: he bought the fastest ticket available, tuned out the clangor, and headed for the lonely outside edges on a piece of Swedish steel horse.

The current bid is around $7,500, with 6 days remaining. For context, an ex-McQueen Husky 400 went for over $200k in 2018. I’m going to keep a very close eye on this one.

While Hunter ran in many of the same circles as the Hollywood elite, he brought a raw authenticity to the seat that few could match. This is a relic of American literature’s most chaotic era, built for a man who lived his life in the red. As the man himself said, “Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube.” This bike is the cannon.

Check it out on Bring a Trailer here.