Right, yes, well - How the hell do I write about these? They are so difficult to understand. Even having ridden my first one recently doesn't really help much.
There were two sorts of Harley in my time. There were the proper ones, the big V-twins, and some two-stroke singles, which were just Harley branded Italian trail bikes, Cagivas, I think. Only the first sort matter. There were three versions that I remember in the mags - The Sportster, the full dress tourer, let's call it a "Glide", and for a very short time there was the Cafe Racer. Let's start with that.
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I was never sure why they built the Cafe Racer. It may have just been a British or European spec bike, but whatever it was, it missed the mark. It looked wonderful, but if you launch a Cafe Racer into an arena where big Japanese power is already slugging out with Jotas and Ducati 900s, you should make sure it has a chance of being competitive. It had no chance. It only had about 60 BHP, which I grant you was not much less than the Duke, but it never handled in the European sense, which would have been a redeeming feature. Like all Harleys, they were built to last, and I actually saw my first one only a few weeks ago. Still looks good. Still goes slow. |
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Now for the "Glide's". They came as Electraglides, and Wideglides, and all sorts of things, but whatever they were called, they were what made Honda build the Wing/Aspencade. These were tourers that you could take from a fairly lowly base model, and add on whatever you wanted to turn it into a two wheeled Wurlitzer. And they were huge. They had fairings about the size of my shed, but an engine that developed huge torque, enough to push something about as aerodynamic as Felixstowe Pier through the air for mile after mile. I have to say I found them desperately ugly, and nothing I read about them made them sound any better than they looked. Poor brakes and no ground clearance were a lot for the Harley image to make up for. |
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And then there were the Sportsters. In the 70's they were about as good as the Glides, but the work Harley put into improving their range in the 80's really paid off, especially so with the Sportsters. They have always looked good, being the simplest of Harleys. That monolithic engine is out in the open for all to see, and stripped of all that heavy touring gear it looks what it really is, a good working motorcycle, that does its stuff day in, day out. Brakes improved, handling certainly did, and while they were still miles behind in the performance stakes, they had enough performance by this time to make them fun instead of frustrating.
But to look solely at what factory bikes Harley produced is to miss the point completely. If you take a Fireblade these days, and put on all the carbon fibre bits and anodised goodies you can find, you may have shifted it a bit from what Mr Honda intended, but it's still a Honda Fireblade. It's not like that with Harleys, I think. What they make in Milwaukee is a core for something that becomes uniquely personal to its owner, in a way no other bike does.
So it was with all of these thoughts about Harleys that I finally got my leg over one recently. A 1340 cc Fat Boy, with Screaming Eagle "silencers". Not as simple as a Sportster and not as much glitz as a Glide, but somewhere in between. I have never ridden a more stable and easy to manouvre bike. It might be heavy, but you are not aware of it. Until you try and brake, that is. My 1982 Suzi has much better brakes.
The sound was incredible, but despite the fact that it had twenty years more development than the ones I used to read about, the engine still felt awful. The slow revving nature wasn't a surprise, but the limited power band was. It shook, in a way that made me not wish to ride it too far.
I am sure you will know the sensation I mean, when I talk about the way a bike accelerates. For me it's fundamental to biking - The way the rev counter swings round the clock faster and faster. The higher the revs, the faster they seem to rise. I think most of us hate redlines - We just want to keep on accelerating, and that red line thing just gets in the way. So you'll understand that getting on a bike where it was all over and done with in the first 3000 revs feels totally alien.
Let's be fair. It hadn't got a lot of miles on the clock, I didn't ride it very far, and I don't believe that the 1340 is the best engine to judge a Harley by. The 1200 is probably rather more lively, and the new generation twin cam engines are said to be a hell of a lot better. Also, I think you need to get two other things right to appreciate a Harley. You need to have a bike that has been made your own by customising it, and you need to be in the right place, America, to really understand. The trouble is that here in the UK, Harleys are wrapped up in so much image bullshit that people can't see beyond it. Mr. Harley and Mr. Davidson didn't design an image - They designed a big bike, and it needs to be used somewhere large, where it fits the canvas.
Yes, I'll have one for the lottery collection. It will be either a Sportster or a Cafe Racer, and you know I think it might get used quite a bit.