Harley-Davidson is regularly voted one of the coolest brands in the world, but Harley riders have traditionally been something of a breed apart; a subculture within the biking community that wouldn’t dream of riding anything else.
That sort of loyalty doesn’t come quickly. Harley has spent 110 years building motorbikes that have led the company to where it is now, and one of the recent standard-bearers has been the Street Glide.
Feast your eyes on the 2014 model. One of the things that sets Harley aside is its unique attitude to form. The Street Glide has a fantastic, instantly recognisable set of proportions; low and wide at the back but high and wide at the front, slung over a long, mean, cruise missile of a frame.
It’s the sort of bike you need to spend an indecent amount of time drinking in with your eyes, searching out all the clever detailing that makes it such a visual tour de force. Few other bikes of any type simply look so fundamentally right. It’s designed with genuine passion.
But enough of the (admittedly necessary) fluff. The new Street Glide has been given a more powerful engine – up to ‘something like 90 horsepower’ according to notoriously figure-shy Harley insiders – and hundreds of small but meaningful tweaks.
One of the key ones is a new opening mechanism for the lockable panniers. It used to be as awkward as a home-schooled teenager, but now it’s just a flick of a neatly-hidden lever.
It’s the panniers you need to watch out for when slinging a leg over the Street Glide’s low seat. It’s easy to kick them if you’re not careful, and of course then there’s the weight of the thing. You push your left foot into the ground and haul its 372kg off the side stand, overcoming a bulk that only disappears above walking pace. When you next see a Harley rider crawling along in traffic with his or her feet splayed out, believe me: that’s a sensible precaution.
But once you’re really moving, that considerable weight disappears in a way that’s hard to believe. The centre of gravity seems to plunge roadwards and leave you with a nimble and stable, if still quite large, platform.
Your arms stretch straight out in front of you, after the Harley fashion, while your feet plant themselves firmly on the long footboards. At normal riding speeds it’s only the spread of your limbs that betrays the bike’s size, and it’s otherwise completely unthreatening.
The improbably shiny new ‘103’ v-twin, named for its capacity in cubic inches, responds quickly enough to completely dispel plenty of preconceptions about this sort of bike or the brand itself, and there’s a meaty wedge of torque in the midrange that lets the Street Glide make surprisingly brisk progress. Push one side of the wide handlebars gently to counter-steer into a corner and the big Harley rolls willingly into it; sensitive to further inputs but planted if you keep yourself steady.
Much thicker forks on the Touring range of bikes, which includes the Street Glide, give the bike a degree of accuracy and strength at the front end that’s been missing from earlier versions.
There’s a bit of buffeting on your helmet at speed thanks to the stubby, style-focused windscreen, but you can’t have everything. Apart from that the bike is really enjoyable to ride. It’s likely to be a bit tiring after maybe 100 miles for anyone not used to regular road trips on such big machinery, but bikers upgrading from older Street Glides will think the ’14 model is pretty refined.
Owning and riding a Harley is as much about the lifestyle and the history as it is about the bike itself, and with that in mind it’s good to see the firm still improving its wares regardless. The Street Glide is a classic and deservedly so, but you’d be a brave fan of the brand to say this wasn’t the best yet.
Model: 2014 Harley-Davidson Street Glide
Price: From £18,295
Engine: 1,690cc v-twin producing circa 90bhp @ circa 6,000rpm and 102lb/ft @ 3,500rpm
Transmission: Six-speed sequential manual gearbox
Weight (wet): 372kg
Seat height: 695mm
Fuel capacity: 22.7 litres