#harley-davidson

According to various sources, President Trump was scheduled to sign more executive orders today at Harley-Davidson headquarters in Milwaukee. However, the visit was apparently canceled at the behest of the Motor Company due to concerns of social blowback by crowds of protesters. According to a post on the Milwaukee Independent website, the Milwaukee Coalition Against Trump (MCAT), is the organization taking credit for influencing Harley-Davidson’s decision to cancel the visit.

Since the Milwaukee-Eight engine was announced last year, much has been made of Harley-Davidson’s newest powerplant. The Motor Company increased power output while maintaining fuel efficiency in the all-new engine. Well, the updates didn’t stop with the engine itself. Over the two years prior to the engine’s release, the Pilgrim Road Powertrain Operations Plant had quietly been upgraded to handle the stringent manufacturing requirements of the new engine. (In fact, this update was the reason we weren’t let into the facility when we showed up on a road trip last year, as described in this article.)

This week’s Top 10 comes to us courtesy of Miguel Galluzzi. Mr. G is best known for designing Ducati’s original Monster and starting the modern naked-bike movement, but before that he also penned Ducati’s early ’90s 900 Supersports. He’s been a busy man ever since, and is currently director for PADC (Piaggio Advanced Design Center), in Pasadena, CA, where he – together with another design team in Noale, Italy – cooks up new Moto Guzzis, Aprilias and other Italian delicacies. —John Burns

When it comes to lightweight cruisers, Harley’s 883 Sportster has been the staple of the category. Around, in one form or another, since the 1950s, it has earned the term OG for the class. Fast forward to 2002 and here we have the 883R Sportster going head-to-head with the Honda Shadow Spirit 750. With 50 years to study the venerable Harley-Davidson, Honda’s Shadow presents a bare-bones, lightweight cruiser that isn’t intimidating to the (relatively) new cruiser rider – traits it shares with the Harley. So who does it better? America or Japan? Read on to find out. 

Merry Christmas from 2008! Remember this commercial from Harley-Davidson? It’s the ghost of Christmas past coming to visit. Best Wishes and Happy New Year to you and yours from the MO crew. See ya in 2017.

Some sportbike riders look down their noses at Harley riders for their perceived emphasis on cruising rather than performance. Well, some of those Ricky Racer wannabees might want to steer clear of the Harley pilot in this video shot on Mulholland Drive’s famous Snake section.

This week’s Church feature is yet another example of the early MO crew’s writing chops. The topic this time? Cruisers! The 2001 Power Cruisers, to be exact. We’re talking the Honda VTX, Yamaha V-Max, Harley-Davidson V-Rod, and Kawasaki Mean Streak, ridden by a bunch of mad men and speed junkies. Big, powerful engines stuffed into cruiser frames, this should be a slam dunk for the Harley. The results, however, might surprise you. Read on to see who won.  

The great American West never suffers fools. When you look at the harsh conditions faced by the hardy souls who set out to claim their fortune in California’s Mojave Desert, the stakes get even higher. Do a little research, and you’ll discover an impressive number of hamlets were born, sometimes prospered, sometimes didn’t, then died – often in dog years. Most have disappeared without a trace. A few still have bits of their remains visible in the arid landscape. Still others hang on in a semi-zombie state between self-sustaining life and their final desiccation plotted by the patient desert.

The original plan was to be in Calico to shoot the wrap video for last week’s “Bagger Brawl” four-bike comparo tour (which should get posted next week, maybe…), but you know what they say about best-laid plans. That goes double for MOron plans. Instead of being an hour-and-a-half from the barn, we wound up running low on daylight and needing to roll tape while we were still in Death Valley, four hours north. Motorcycles tend to make you think things are a lot closer than they are, even if you were just there last year. By the time the cameras were packed back up and the Harley Street Glide, Victory Magnum, Moto Guzzi MGX-21 and Indian Chieftain were ready to roll, the sun was setting and the “mega moon” was rising over one of the most desolately beautiful places in North America.

Dear MOby,

With EBR’s recent trademark filing for the name Black Lightning, we’re waiting in anticipation to see what Erik Buell will bring to us next. However, while we await the Black Lightning, let’s go back in time and visit one of Buell’s earlier cult hits, and possibly the grandfather to the Black Lightning: the S1 Lightning. The MO staff dubbed the bike “ Buell’s Monster” and even called it “The most radical motorcycle yet from the Buell Motor Company.” With its hopped up Sportster 1200 engine housed inside a sporting package far removed from the cruiser the 1200 V-Twin was originally intended for, the S1 was a radical bike then and remains a cult classic today. Read on to see what the early MOron crew thought of the bike. 

Every Harley-Davidson owner and just about every motorcyclist knows that the Motor Company’s line of performance products is called Screamin’ Eagle. However, many may just look at the upgrades as being mostly the same as the multitudes of aftermarket hop-up parts available. Since the release of the Milwaukee-Eight engine in the 2017 Harley-Davidson touring models, the engineers and media people behind Screamin’ Eagle thought that now would be a good time to explain – in detail – what they feel sets these components apart from the others on the market. So, we were sent out to Milwaukee to learn about and experience first-hand how the Screamin’ Eagle kits can improve the ME’s performance without many of the compromises required by aftermarket kits.

Maybe it’s human nature, but motorcycle publications are constantly trying to determine which bike can lap the fastest, jump the highest, or travel the farthest. Competition is what feeds the beast. Motorcycle.com’s as guilty of it as anyone, and it’s easy to see why: motorcycling has become so segmented these days, with machines designed to satisfy one particular niche. They do it very well, too; sportbikes are insanely advanced, adventure bikes are capable of traversing nearly any terrain, and both cruisers and sport-tourers can pound out miles in two very different, yet also very satisfying, ways. And we haven’t even mentioned streetfighters, nakeds, and standards…

Change comes slowly in the world of Harley-Davidson. The faithful will say that is a feature, not a bug. Still, change does come, and when any manufacturer introduces a new engine line, it’s a big deal. When Harley introduces a new engine and summarily whisks away the old engine in an entire category of its motorcycle models, it’s a sea change. You can almost feel the earth shifting on its axis. While we’d like to think that the performance of the new engine – which is impressive – could be the cause, the gravitational adjustment is most likely from the sheer number of motojournalists the Motor Company flew from locations around the globe to northwestern Washington state for the Milwaukee-Eight’s riding introduction.

Every year Harley-Davidson releases special models from its Custom Vehicle Operations skunkworks. These limited-edition factory customs are chosen to represent the best that Harley has to offer, which is usually based on the most popular models the manufacturer sells. This year, for our test of a 2017 CVO model, we chose the CVO Street Glide. We did this for two reasons. First, we’d get to do a true apples-to-apples comparison since we were also testing the standard Street Glide. This perspective would give us the opportunity to see what similarities and differences the Milwaukee-Eight 107 had with the Milwaukee-Eight 114 bruiser. Second, we last tested the CVO Street Glide in model year 2015, which would give us a good impression of how far the model has come in two model years.