At the end of last year, I had the opportunity to ride what I
feel are the three best looking motorcycles in Harley’s current
litany of machines: the Roadster, the Low Rider S and the CVO Pro
Street Breakout. And they were each in their own way absolutely
breathtaking in design and surprisingly excellent in function. How
is it that Harley Davidson is able to create such brilliant looking
bikes, each of which is wholly tapped into the prevailing zeitgeist
of modern aesthetic culture? In my opinion much of this has to do
with them paying apt attention to the bikes being created by
brilliant young customisers like Charlie Stockwell of Warr’s Harley
Davidson, London and Winston Yeh of
Rough
Crafts in Taipei. Says Stockwell, “When I
started putting inverted forks, rear sets and twin disc brakes on
Sportsters it was relatively unheard of. It’s nice to see that
Harley Davidson understood there was a real demand for a great
handling bike and came up with the Roadster.”
The Roadster
Of the three machines that I had
the pleasure of testing, the Roadster was the greatest
revelation. Now, I’ve owned a Sportster before and found the bike
top heavy, dull and in performance terms a total anathema to the
sobriquet emblazoned on its gas tank. So I was simply amazed at how
a change in geometry to place more weight on the front of the bike,
an inverted cartridge type fork, twin disc brakes and .70 inches
more suspension in the rear could utterly transform the Sportster
into a an absolute blast to throw around.
It felt light and effortless to
handle, balanced and sure-footed even when leaned over enough that
its mid-rear foot pegs threw up a shower of sparks. Even better
were the looks of the bike, which fused a sort of boy-racer style
with the classic Sportster genetic blueprint to create a bike that
felt wonderfully contemporary. It was the perfect bike for the
urban landscape: small and nimble enough to squeeze between lanes,
(although watch out for the slightly wider-than-you-think
handlebars) and then great fun when you take it up into the canyons
for a cathartic blast.
The Low Rider S
The Low Rider S on the other hand
owes its aesthetic lineage in equal parts to Willie G. Davidson’s
iconic 1977 XLCR café racer and the FX television series
Sons of
Anarchy. Whatever the
inspiration, the result is a motorcycle that is simply fantastic.
And Harley’s recipe for success consists of taking its most lithe
and maneuverable Big Twin model, the Dyna, stuffing a 110 cubic
inch Screamin’ Eagle motor replete with a priapic open element air
filter, and slamming it relatively low to the ground. Everything
gets blacked out, and then a decidedly XLCR style pair of mag
wheels – pimped out in gold no less – and mini fairing are added.
And my God is this motorcycle fun. My first reaction to its
delivery at my hotel Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, was to
leap onto its back and hurtle up the Pacific Coast Highway, then
turn into the canyons that connect with Mulholland
Drive.
While not as nimble as the Roadster, the Low Rider S will leave
you with a massive grin on your face, in particular each time you
grab a fist full of throttle and the bike explodes like it’s been
smote up the arse by Mjölnir, hammer of Thor, the Norse God of
thunder. But the Low Rider S continued to please even at
standstill. It’s so damnably cool looking that you become engaged
in conversation with people all the time. With its lean, black,
understated-yet-extroverted personality, it’s the perfect modern
Harley and you’ll feel entirely at ease wearing anything from a
black blazer and tailored denim trousers to jeans and sneakers
astride it. It’s even a motorcycle I could imagine arriving to a
black tie event on.
The CVO Pro Street Breakout
The final bike completing this latest almighty triumvirate of
Harley’s new line up was the CVO Pro Street Breakout, a bike
with the same 110 inch Screamin’ Eagle Motor found in the Low Rider
S. From a purely aesthetic perspective, the CVO Breakout is as
menacing and sinister as it is alluring. Taking inspiration from
drag strip racers from the ‘50s and ‘60s, Harley’s design team
created a bike with a certain sense of dynamic tension akin to a
large predatorial cat about to pounce. And though it looked
impressive, the Breakout was the least nimble of the three due to
its use of the Softail frame – a faux-rigid design with minimal
rear clearance – as well as the corresponding weight of the big
machine. That having been said, on long straight sojourns down the
highway to dine at Manuela – something of a local farming culinary
hot spot in the Los Angeles Art District – the CVO Breakout proved
a reassuring and phenomenal looking steed.
Even more interesting was when
researching opinions on the bikes in question I discovered that
thanks to social media’s all-encompassing reach, we are now amid a
vibrant internationalisation of Harley culture from Taiwan to
Russia, Indonesia to Thailand, Dubai to Germany. This organic grass
roots galvanisation perpetuated by the next generation of customers
has transformed what was once a colloquial American dialect into
what may well be the most relevant international motorcycle
language around.
