Written by  Story by Mark Barnett

Excerpted from Barnett’s Magazine Print Article

Talk about stupid fun, coming up with new prototype bike ideas for Oberdan Bezzi to mock up has probably been the most fun I’ve had producing this magazine for the last fourteen years. Most of the time, I’ve been trying to make up models that would increase Harley-Davidson’s market share, bikes to bring in Japanese and European bike customers. Ducati, BMW, and Triumph have used the chaos of this super recession to release a host of new models in an effort to grab market share from their competitors. It is very costly to bring out a brand new design, but these three companies judged it to be worth the effort. Ducati has created a large dual sport and a cruiser. BMW has designed a four-cylinder sport bike and a six-cylinder uber-tourer. Triumph has come out with a super mid-sized sport bike, a dual sport, and is working on a beginner’s single as well. They are all trying to grab back some of the market share lost to the Japanese over the last thirty years. Should Harley ever decide to go down this path, we have provided our humble suggestions for all to mock, praise, ridicule, laugh at, or simply to fantasize over. I do have to admit most of the feedback has been very positive. One Australian readers said something about, “putting the missus out on the street corner” to finance our Dual Sport if Harley ever made it. He continued, “I could near enough say I’d bet both me balls on it that it’d be a hit down under.” I’m sure he meant the corner bit in jest.

This issue’s first concept bike is another variant of a standard bike, a flexible design that could be modified to fill several niches. Here’s the way I envision this bike would be built. First, to get a standard foot peg position, the bottom end would be replaced by one similar to that of a V-Rod. The clutch would be tucked in much tighter and the foot pegs could be moved to wherever they are most comfortable for a rider. The second advantage of this bottom end would be that a longer swingarm would be possible for better handling since the gear drive primary would result in a much shorter engine/transmission combination. Thirdly, the bike could be balanced exactly like a V-Rod with one balancer to take most of the shake out and then use a very subtle rubber-mounting system to absolute kill any remaining shaking, but without the engine movement associated with other rubber-mount frames. V-Rods run perfectly smooth with very little mirror shake, even at idle. Most people have no idea that they are rubber mounted.

As far as the displacement goes, I think Harley should use the 103” Twin Cam top end but go ahead and water- or oil-cool the heads to get the temperature down and to allow a higher state of tune for increased horsepower and torque. The radiator could be quite small as Oberdan has shown here. I think a huge section of the non-Harley riding public would finally get what is so fun about Harley-Davidsons if they sat on a light- weight bike like this with a solid 100-plus foot-pounds of torque. Torque you feel every day, taking off from every traffic light. The high-horsepower output of Harley-Davidson’s competition is only felt on very infrequent, illegal bursts. I’m convinced that many non-Harley riders would enjoy a bike that has the same or slightly more torque as a Suzuki Hayabusa, all of which is available at half the rpm you’d have to spin the Suzuki for the same torque reading.

The rest of the bike would need to be standard high-spec sport bike parts to keep the weight down. A bike like this to draw new riders would have to weigh at most 525 pounds. A sub-500 one would really do the trick. This bike could lead to a family of bikes, some decorated out as sport touring bikes, some angrily styled to join the street fighter/naked bike fray. Oberdan captured a pretty good look for the standard. I especially enjoy his, “Farewell to MV Agusta” upswept exhaust pipe reminiscent of MV’s gently swooping pipes from the 1970’s 750 models.

Overall, I know it is very hard to decide if manufacturing a bike like this would be worth the risk. If the economy recovers, the three European companies will have made great inroads on their competition. They have been reporting 40% to 60% increases in sales though I can’t independently confirm those numbers. If however, we slide back into recession, those who watched their cash carefully will be better-positioned to survive. After watching this debt ceiling debate play out, I wouldn’t want to be a fortune teller right now, I have no idea what’s going to happen to us. But I think it would sure be more endurable with a toy like this.