BATES

Robert Owens Bates started with a 600-square-foot garage in Los Angeles, repairing motor scooters and building windshields by hand. When wartime shortages closed his shop, he moved operations to his home garage, working nights at Lockheed Aircraft and manufacturing by day. That stubborn refusal to quit became the foundation of everything Bates would become.

In the 1960s, Bates turned all-black racing leather into color. Champions lined up: Kenny Roberts, Gene Romero, Mert Lawwill, Giacomo Agostini. David Aldana asked Bates to sew a full skeleton onto his suit, creating one of the most iconic images in motorcycle racing history. Russ Collins wore Bates when he became the first motorcycle drag racer to break 200 MPH. T.C. Christenson wore Bates aboard the legendary Hogslayer. Dick Mann wore Bates to two Grand National Championships.

“Back in those times there wasn’t a lot of people like us around. Now there’s nobody like us around.”Dana Grindle

In 1984, the same workshop built the leather jacket for Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. 50 custom sets for T2 alone. Arnold still wears Bates. In 2009, Robert Bates was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame, one of fewer than 350 people in all of motorcycling history to receive the honor.

Today, Dana carries that legacy forward from a new workshop in Alabama, still building every suit one at a time, still measuring by hand, still refusing to cut corners that matter. When you order from Bates, you join a lineage that includes world champions, land speed record holders, and the most iconic leather jacket in cinema. Your name goes on that list next.