That’s… Wow. At least the guy who was trying to upsell me tried to convince me that the big cruisers were just more enjoyable than any middleweight standard or sport bike.
(And having a few friends who made the Harley to Goldwing transition, I know why that bike is his first concern, but I am also pretty sure he’s wrong…)
Try riding a bicycle in traffic with your fingers stuffed into your ears and a motorcycle accelerating past you 10cm away.
Harley actually has an ebike.
The reviews are pretty favourable, but the comments all focus on the $30,000 (
) price tag. I’m not sure if Harley knows what market they are going for.
Full disclosure: [HARLEY GOES BY] years ago I had a Harley — a 250cc Sprint, actually made by Aermacchi in Italy, another brand that Harley acquired and then dumped. It was a love-hate relationship. Kick start was on the left side (awkward) and so was the rear brake (deadly if you learned, as I did, on almost any other bike).
I mean, I hope it was clear from my comment that I was merely joining in on the spirit of your comment, cosplaying as one of those people.
Yeah, we do have quite a few in Franconia. It’s a combination of having been in the American occupation zone, thus having more American influence on the public consciousness and (in the old days when it was hard to get imports) more direct access to American stuff and of having the winding roads that motorcyclists love. Whenever the sun shines they come out in droves.
That is absolutely correct, however, as far as I can tell as someone who has grown up there (but not in that sort of milieu) it actually isn’t connected to racism or even the right wing there at all. I know this might be hard to accept but it’s really just a naively received symbol of “freedom” and “rebellion”. The white supremacist connotation simply hadn’t made it across the pond. At least that is how it used to be. I am sure the discourse of the last decade or so has made people aware even here what the flag has always stood for but at least into the early 2000s it genuinely wasn’t used as a dog whistle as far as I can tell.
Well it is a luxury brand in the same way something like Gucci is. You’re not paying for quality but for the brand name, the brand’s heritage and for the fact that people know how much you paid for it
In the right circumstances, they can be.
I’m normally a basic practical bike sorta guy (currently on a Yamaha MT-07HO), but I once spent a day riding a borrowed Kawasaki cruiser (Vulcan, mid-1990’s) on a sportsbike scratching road. The bike was fully tricked out with extreme apehangers, forward-set pegs, ridiculously loud muffler, massive rear tyre, etc.
It was an absolute hoot; you couldn’t go fast (because the handling was dreadful and so was the power-to-weight ratio), but that didn’t matter because it was so much fun. It’d wobble out of corners like a drunk marshmallow and bellow down the straights with the vibes giving you a butt massage.
The experience was comparable to wrestling a big and stupid 1970’s muscle car down a twisty road. Slow, impractical, feels more dangerous than it is, but leaves you with a huge smile anyway.
I wouldn’t want one as my only bike, but it was fun for a day.
Technically it’s a BMW replica, or licence production, or soviet evolution. Specifically it’s derived from the model R71, the predecessor to the R75. The boxer engine and shaft drive are a bit of a telltale.
There’s a fair bit of detail on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-72_Motorcycle), and naturally there’s also Chinese derivatives.
I’ve owned hundreds of bikes since the early 80s, and nearly every manufacturer including Harley, Indian, Norton, BSA, all the Japanese brands, Ossa, CZ, Hodaka, Maico, Husqvarna etc.
Harley Davidson has been so behind technology wise it’s ridiculous and something they’ve always clung to as “Heritage”
I live in Los Angeles, and when I bought my current bike it was from a company in Orange County that was owned by Yamaha. It’s a 1300 twin with fuel injection, water cooling and a badass chopper feel. And it was $7000 less than the comparable Harley model with was air cooled and a carburetor.
And if you don’t care about the specs, I guarantee that if I could show you a picture you would choose it over any Harley Davidson.
Surely with all that, they deserve a bail-out?
Well, tbh, you couldn’t get me to ride a quiet bike on an LA freeway - “Loud pipes save lives” is a cliché for a very good reason. Far too many auto drivers just don’t see anything smaller than a car.
OTOH, as one of my favorite biker mommas often said, “the louder the pipes, the smaller the dick.” (And she would have known!) There’s a big difference between safely loud and obnoxiously loud.
A friend recently bought an electric motorcycle, and while it’s not *completely* silent, it’s pretty quiet.
He took it back after a week - he said it was terrifying in traffic, almost as if he had become invisible.
(Actually, tbh, these days you couldn’t get me on any kind of bike at all on an LA freeway. I don’t roll or bounce or slide nearly as well as I used to. 
)
No, it was totally clear you weren’t trying to “call me out.” I’m just really sensitive about my provincialism!
Yes, the roads there are really nice. I’m always wanting to get away to at least have a bicycle ride on the towpaths. Someday…
Yes, I have a few friends from the former East, one from Berlin and one from Prague. Sometimes the friend in Prague, it’s so hard to imagine what he describes, since the area around seems a hive of industry and commerce now. It’s really harder to comprehend the fascination with the US. To me, from here, the US seems so shabby in comparison. But I guess that’s just another form of naivite.
Yeah the connotations in Europe are quite different, and a Harley doesn’t appear to come with a uniform or an “I am now a scary biker” wish fulfillment.
Believe that’s part of why they were able to get initial success there. Like American muscle cars it’s something you simply could not get there for a long time.
My cousin rides an older Harley around Dublin, there’s not an orange bandana or red white and blue murder eagle to be seen in his presence, or among any of the motorcycle guys he knows. Just proper safety gear and friendly faces.
Seems to be a bike not a life style over there. A very American bike, but not 'Murican.
You couldn’t pay me to get on anything with 2 wheels that has to compete for space on the road, even a bicycle. I’m sure being on a Harley gets one noticed more but doesn’t necessarily mean it’s inherently safe, but based on noise alone: Good bye Harley. You will not be missed.
This is one of the best summaries of the appeal of them that I have ever read. I find I like this experience on four wheels rather than two. I will take a ratty muscle car over a modern Ferrari every day of the week, in no small part because the Ferrari isn’t going to be as brutal or graceful as a liter bike, and it ain’t worth comparing the muscle car to a bike.
I do get it, and I have ridden them. But feet forward cruisers make me slouch in the saddle and my back ends up hurting and I don’t feel like I have as much power and balance pushing on the handle bars while hanging off.
I also love 200ish cc dirt bikes and dual sports. Loud, spunky and unruly on the street. Way more fun than they have any right to be. A little different than the rumbling cruiser, but the same kind of out of place fun on a back road.
Edit to add: I spent a couple thousand miles on an MT07 before getting the MT10. They are fantastic hooligan machines and I loved every mile on it. I love those bikes.
It works because the ‘market theory’ we’ve been taught is not actual economics in the scholarly sense and markets don’t actually work that way. In fact, it’s just propaganda that’s used to justify bad-faith dealings after the fact.
And the arguably best Buel model had an engine made by Rotax. 
I knew a few guys who bought HD-engined Buells when they first came out. Every one of them got rid of it within a few months, due to constant unreliability. Going out for a group ride and watching the Buell guys get trailered home was a routine event.
Nice bikes, awful engines. The non-HD bits were good, but the dreadful HD engineering at the core killed them.
I had a riding buddy who owned one of the first-gen Buels. He used to joke that it came with a free duffle bag so you had a way to carry home all the parts that vibrated off during your ride.
I once worked with a guy who worked in a suit (and was a crook, like everyone else I worked with at the time) and was pretty uptight. He stopped shaving every year 2 to 3 weeks before Daytona Bike Week, when he would leather up and trailer his bike most of the way up the Florida coast. He’d unload a little way outside the city and ride triumphantly to Bike Week.
It totally is conservative cosplay.
