Ridden: Harley-Davidson Street Rod

The invitation could hardly have been more specific. “You are invited to Marbella, Spain, to view, ride and understand the new Harley-Davidson Street Rod. You will be able to ride the new model in urban and country locations for a full day, including along two of the routes widely recognized as being amongst the most enjoyable and demanding biking roads in Europe. You will ride along the twisting A366 tarmac rollercoaster via El Burgo to the historic city of Ronda, spectacularly located in the mountains above Marbella. You will then descend back to Marbella along the legendary A397 – a sinuous length of challenging road steeped in automotive and motorcycling history.”

Yes, please!

Hang on, though. You’re inviting me to ride a Harley-Davidson along those fabulous roads, where I’ve had the thrill of exploiting the performance and handling of successive Ducati, Triumph, KTM, BMW and Yamaha models down the years. So, what can this new Street Rod be then ? A Harley that handles? And, pardon my incredulity, one that’s listed for just $8,695 in the USA and is made in India at Harley’s Haryana plant? (Except in the USA and Canada, for whom H-D’s Kansas City factory is the mother ship.)

Not overlooking the short-lived 2009 Sportster XR1200, the last real Harley-that-handled was the Street version of the Motor Company’s VR1000 Superbike that I rode back in 1994. The fastest street-legal production motorcycle ever made in America, it could be yours for $49,490, a huge sum back then. In exchange for which you had to promise you’d never ride it on the streets of the USA. Poland was OK, though, because that’s where the street version of the bike that brought Harley-Davidson back to road racing in 1994 was homologated for everyday use. But now here’s something one-tenth of the price after adjusting for inflation, promising comparable handling as a true rider’s bike. Bring it on!

That was then and this is now. And yes, Harley-Davidson Europe was indeed confident enough in the company’s new Street Rod model to invite us to tackle the Ronda roads on it. That contrasted with Harley’s head office, which held its US press launch in Florida, where anything other than a right-angle turn is alien territory. They should have had more faith in what their R&D guys have come up with. Their remit may have been to produce an urban streetfighter aimed at bringing younger riders into the Harley fold, but the result is a great deal more than that. Just as all those Ducati Monsters you see roaming the streets of San Francisco are not forbidden from carving corners on Skyline Boulevard at weekends, so the new Street Rod is so much more than just a traffic tool.

A 140-mile high-speed ride along some of the most demanding two-wheeled territory in Europe underlined the broad capabilities of Harley’s new Street Rod package. It delivers H-D dealers with a genuine rival to the Triumph Street Twin, Yamaha MT-07 and especially the Ducati Monster 797 and its Scrambler cousins. But it’s one with a truly American personality and a super-competitive price. “We’re reaching out to customers in a space where we didn’t really have a product before now, who are already perhaps well-disposed towards Harley-Davidson, but haven’t yet found the bike in our lineup to meet their needs,” said Jeff Strunk, H-D’s Motorcycle Product Planning Manager. “They’re primarily a younger crowd, living in a more urban environment, looking for a bike to get around on in a more exciting way.”

Harley’s desire to make the Street Rod a world bike sold at an affordable price inevitably led it to base this Milwaukee Monster on its Street 750 introduced three years ago. Together with its Street 500 sister it has since become a global success in spite of initial fit and finish issues. The Street duo helped propel Harley to the top of the outright sales charts in Australia in 2016, where the Street 500 was the country’s best-selling model. Adding the Street Rod to the lineup was a smart move – even if the upgrades to the platform have entailed much more than a light makeover.

The Street’s Eu4-compliant, 749cc Revolution X engine has been re-tuned to produce 68 bhp at 8,750 rpm, and 47.9 ft-lb of torque at 4,000 rpm.That’s 20% more peak horsepower and a 10% improvement in torque across the rev range versus the Street 750 in similar Euro 4 guise (18% and 8% respectively in the USA’s EPA-approved version). To underline the performance potential of this engine design, it’s worth noting that it also powers the XG750R the Harley-Davidson team races in the 2017 American Flat Track Championship.

That improved performance for the Street Rod over the Street has been achieved via higher-lift cams and new pistons which raise compression a full point to 12.0:1.  A larger airbox feeds a 42mm-diameter twin-choke Mikuni throttle body and thence via revised intake ports to the combustion chamber, which exhales through a shorter but higher-volume silencer. There’s a single injector positioned under each butterfly in the twin-choke throttle body, and the rev limiter has been raised 1,000 rpm to 9,000 revs.

This so-called High Output Revolution X motor is installed in a MiG-welded tubular steel double-cradle frame with a rectangular-section backbone. The swingarm pivots and shorter rear sub-section are all stamped from mild steel;the rear one carrying the numberplate and incorporating the reflectors is a particularly complex piece. While similar to the Street chassis it has quite different geometry, with a steeper 27º rake for the non-adjustable 43mm upside-down fork.

Trail on the Street Rod has also been reduced substantially versus the Street for a tighter-handling package, while the wheelbase is also slightly reduced to 1510mm. That’s in spite of a longer swingarm giving extra traction and a more forward weight bias. A pair of gas-charged, preload-adjustable shocks give 117mm of travel (against 90mm on the Street). Weight is a hefty 229kg dry, or 238kg on the road.

Michelin Scorcher 21 radial tyres – incorporating the Harley-Davidson name on the sidewalls – were designed specifically for the Street Rod. The 120/70 R17V front is matched to a 160/60 R17V rear, up from the 15-incher on the Street. This helps increase cornering clearance from a 28.5º either side on the Street to 37.3º right and 40.2º on the left on the Street Rod. The front cast aluminium wheel now carries twin 300mm brake discs versus just a single such disc on the Street. They’re gripped by two-piston calipers from Brembo. ABS is standard, in accordance with Euro 4 requirements.

The seat height is raised by 104mm to 765mm on the Street Rod. The only instrument is a single 3.5-inch round clock with an analogue speedo, and a discreet digital insert which can be scrolled to display an odometer, twin trips, time, and a combined gear selected monitor and tacho. Minimalistic but adequate. Harley-Davidson’s Smart Security System is a standard fitment. The Street Rod costs $8,695 in the USA against $7,549 for the Street 750 (and $6,849 for the Street 500), and comes in three colours – Vivid Black, Charcoal Denim and Olive Gold. Production began in February, so supplies are in dealer showrooms now.

Hopping aboard revealed a quite aggressive riding position that seems curious at first. While you do eventually get used to it, is not really ideal, especially for taller riders. The flat, wide handlebar has you leaning slightly forward, Monster-style, hunched over the tank that’s a carryover from the Street 750. Compared to the Street the footrests have been moved 75mm further back and also raised, which is just about OK for a rider of my 5’10” height, but would be marginally bearable for anyone taller. My left foot was OK, but I had issues with my right foot. Basically, the bulky silencer means that to give the Street Rod sufficient ground clearance they’ve had to raise it up and park the footrest right on top of it. This made it hard for me to put my foot on the right peg while also covering the rear brake pedal.

Because of this I ended up using the front brakes only, which was no hardship since these are as excellent as the single front disc on the 222kg Street 750 is inadequate. Despite its porky weight they stopped the Rod brilliantly every time, whether in panic situations or modulating the lever to keep up momentum through sweeping turns on the Ronda roads. Doing this is not a single-finger job, though; there’s a kind of servo effect on the lever, which means you must grab it decisively with a full hand to achieve proper stopping power during the second half of the pull. The bar-end mirrors are effective and unobtrusive, plus you can mount them above or below the grips, as you wish. They feature a patent-pending design that allows them to fold back without interfering with the rider’s hands and they can be restored easily to the original position.

The High Output Revolution X motor, in spite of a slightly muted exhaust note, is stirring and responsive in use. A completely linear and very smooth power delivery gives no undue vibration at any revs, even approaching the soft-action rev-limiter. Though far from being a traditional Harley slugger of a motor it’ll pull wide open in sixth gear from just 2,000 rpm all the way to the limiter with zero transmission snatch. While you do feel an extra surge of midrange power above 4,000 rpm, this encourages you to use the clean-shifting gearbox. I couldn’t help notice the snatchy, fierce pickup from a closed throttle in the bottom three gears. So after trail-braking into the apex of a tight second-gear turn, when you get back on the gas again the initial response from the Street Rod’s EFI is so brusque that you risk missing the apex. Pity. Likewise it’s sometimes hard to avoid a jerky throttle response when inching along in traffic-choked streets. Since the Street doesn’t suffer from this, it must presumably be a mapping issue, so hopefully Harley can get this fixed soon. Apart from this it’s a great piece of engine development, and will surely be a platform that Harley will build on.

Compromised riding position notwithstanding, the Street Rod was a brilliant companion on which to attack the Ronda roads. That smooth, fluid power delivery once on the move, and the flat torque curve means it’s a motorcycle you can ride intuitively. The tighter steering geometry makes it an easy bike to hustle through a succession of tighter turns, flicking it from side to side with ease. Yup – it’s a Harley that handles! One idiosyncrasy is that you must make a point of hooking back a gear or two to drive through fast sweeping turns on the gas, else you must back off the throttle as that still pretty rangy rake makes itself felt on a trailing throttle, and understeer sets in. It’s not a problem, just a trait you must recognise and respond to.

Speaking of the front end, I was pretty impressed by the amount of feedback I got from the non-adjustable Endurance fork and the all-new Michelin tyres. I’ll admit to mistrust in this combo to start with as I upped the pace, with gradually diminishing suspicion as I took a little more lean angle and just a bit more turn speed. By the end of the morning I was really happy with the extent I could feel what the front tyre was doing. Same thing at the rear, where the ride quality of the twin coil-over shocks with spring preload set halfway through the five-position settings was pretty good for what is frankly budget suspension. However, you must absolutely take notice when you start grinding out the hero tabs on the flip-up footrests. On the right side if you ignore that early warning the next thing to deck out is the very sturdy exhaust shroud and that will lift the back wheel off the ground. There’s a significant opportunity here for aftermarket suppliers.

Competent and comfortable as the Street Rod proved to be in the wide open spaces of the Spanish mountainsides its predominant design brief is as an urban-focused hotrod. It’s a role it proved ideally suited to in stop-start Ronda traffic, or in Marbella’s ever more traffic-choked rush hour. The clutch lever action is light enough that your left hand doesn’t freeze up with repeated use and traffic manners are good once you learn to work around that jerky throttle. The eager-revving motor allows you to launch away from stop lights with ease then scoot in and out of traffic, squirting between cars and trucks with room to spare. It’s a pretty fair approximation of a Euro-style hooligan bike but with the Harley-Davidson name on the tank. The only downside of riding the Street Rod in town is heat. Riding in jeans meant I repeatedly had my left inside leg roasted by the rear cylinder’s rocker cover, and the fat silencer meant that I had to hook my right leg around it to reach the ground at rest.

However, the great-looking styling and general sense of coolness, coupled with that iconic name on the fuel tank and invigorating performance will surely together combine to make this new model a hit. The Street Rod and the successor models we can surely expect on this same platform – Flat Tracker, Café Racer, you name it – will be a pivotal component in Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich’s professed aim to add two million new Harley owners in the next decade. That will be fuelled by no less than fifty new models to be brought to market in the next five years. That ambition can only be met by radically expanding the spread of customers for the company’s products. And that means making motorcycles that are quite unlike anything with the bar-and-shield badge on them before.

It also requires Harley-Davidson dealers to come to the party in terms of embracing the Motor Company’s brave new direction. This will require a change in attitude from those who contributed to the demise of Buell by parking its bikes in the corner on the grounds that “they don’t appeal to our core customers.” Out of sight out of mind can’t be allowed to pertain here, and it’ll be interesting to see just how hard Levatich and his men are prepared to come down on uber-traditionalist H-D dealers. Because what they have here is a fine piece of model development which, if prominently displayed and properly promoted, will surely attract people to a Harley dealership who would never have darkened its doors before. The Street Rod is Harley’s equivalent of the KTM Duke 125/200; a well-priced, cool-looking performance motorcycle designed to attract younger customers to join the Harley-Davidson family. The next challenge is to keep them riding Harleys as they progress through life and up the capacity scale. That’s Joe Dealer’s chance to turn them into core customers if he was smart enough to meet their needs first time around.

But the Street Rod is merely Levatich and company’s Step One – so what else have you got coming our way, gentlemen??!

 

Photos: Stefano Gadda and Lionel Beylot