A Brief History of Barnett Harley-Davidson

Sherman Barnett came to El Paso in 1961. He worked in the car business for many years. His son Mark began racing motorcycles in 1973 and after looking in the garage at nine racing motorcycles in various states of repair and disrepair, the senior Barnett thought to himself, “I need to get these things wholesale.” At that time, the opportunity arose to own a Yamaha shop. Yamaha of El Paso was born and in its eight years under Sherman’s leadership led the nation in sales twice. In 1977, Al Jones who owned the Harley-Davidson dealership next to Yamaha of El Paso on Montana, asked Sherman to take over the dealership. Al had been the Harley dealer for decades but the lapses in quality in the 1970’s took much of the fun out of the dealership for him. I remember going over to the Harley store to redecorate and re-organize. We put up hand drawn signs for the departments and set out four large barrels of 99-cent T-Shirts. That was a circus. All the shirts were seconds, so you had to pull them out and look at them carefully before making your purchase. First thing Monday morning, several employees had to go through the giant pile of discarded T’s on the counter and get them all back into the right barrels...