The Assimilation: Rock Machine Become Bandidos: Bikers United Against the Hells Angels
As a leader of the Bandidos motorcycle gang, Winterhalder facilitated the assimilation of the Toronto-based Rock Machine gang into the Bandidos. Before his retirement from the club in 2003, Winterhalder was instrumental in running the Bandidos, an international motorcycle club formed in the American Southwest in the 1960s and affiliated with the Outlaws in their ongoing contretemps with Ralph “Sonny” Barger’s Hells Angels. In furthering the Bandidos’ interests, Winterhalder managed the incredibly delicate process of accepting the embattled Rock Machine into the larger group, thereby saving those Canadian chopper pilots from the extreme duress applied to them by Maurice “Mom” Baucher’s Montreal-based Angels chapter. Providing another perspective on matters Barger has weighed in on in many books, Winterhalder makes an important contribution to the documentation of a quintessentially American subculture. --Mike Tribby