We ride the new Harley-Davidson Sportster S.
It’s 6 a.m. in downtown Los Angeles. A dozen or so groggy motorcycle journalists clamber aboard a row of Harley-Davidson Sportster S ($14,999) motorcycles parked outside our hotel. Out front, there’s a guy pressure washing the sidewalk, flooding the street in iridescent runoff. As I maneuver my test bike onto the road, the Sportster’s 180/70 rear Dunlop gets filmed in the stuff. I bring the bike near upright and snap the throttle to spool it up maybe 2,000 rpm; the back tire briefly steps out before going smoothly back in line with the help of some imperceptible electronic intervention. I haven’t traveled ten yards, but it’s already obvious the 2021 Harley-Davidson Sportster S is far more than the mere symbol its predecessor morphed into during its 64-year production run.
For some, the legendary Sportster family is meaningful precisely because it’s a symbol. A 45-degree air-cooled pushrod engine, classic cruiser styling, that Milwaukee sound: They’re real, valuable, and necessary, because they’re the soul of Harley-Davidson. To some, they’re even symbols of an idealized American spirit, equal parts blue-collar grit and simpler times. If the symbol vanishes, the bar bends and the shield cracks. Killing the soul kills the symbol.
For others, the old Sportster is not meaningful precisely because it’s a symbol. To them, it’s a symbol of old technology, old ways of thinking, and a culture better left in the past. The Sportster-as a motorcycle, dammit, not a freaking metaphor-is slow, crude, and hampered by a form that puts someone’s idea of fashion above performance, practicality, and comfort.
If the Sportster is a symbol, the radical departure of the 2021 Sportster S suggests it’s one that Harley-Davidson no longer thinks accurately reflects the truth.
And the truth is, the Sportster S subverts the archetype by being (nearly) everything its predecessor isn’t.
Brad Richards [no relation to the author], Harley-Davidson’s VP of Styling and Design, says, “Our conversations within the company were: ‘How far can we go outside the archetype in terms of the experience?’ You don’t want to mess with the formula too much because folks will walk. But when we did the research we found that one of the overwhelming narratives was that customers gave us permission. [Previously,] it was almost like our own state of mind was keeping us from finding the courage to branch out.”
And branch out they did. Just as the original 1957 Sportster upended proceedings when it replaced the side-valve K-model, the Sportster S is a controversial departure in certain camps. Gone are the 45-degree V angle, the pushrods, the simplicity of air cooling. Gone are the familiar rumble and the rough ‘n’ tumble personality of America’s longest-running motorcycle model.
Instead there’s a 60-degree V angle with liquid cooling, four valves per cylinder, variable valve timing, crankpins with a 30-degree offset, and maintenance-free hydraulic lash valve adjusters. Using a version of the Revolution Max 1250 engine that debuted on the Pan America, the Sportster S produces a claimed 120 hp at 7,500 rpm and 94 pound-feet of torque at 6,000 rpm.
Ripping from stoplight to stoplight in a midsummer LA dawn, the engine demonstrates that it shares as little in common with the Sportser’s Evolution engine, as the spec sheet suggests. But in the details it somehow manages to convey that it’s built by the same people who build Big Twins and Evo Sportsters.
The Sportster S’s fueling is just a touch jittery below 2,000 rpm, and on/off throttle response is a bit abrupt, but mentioning these traits is nitpicking. In all other ways the motor is exceptionally refined. Power delivery is supremely linear, and the absence of vibration through the bulk of the rev range, thanks to a 90-degree firing order and primary and secondary balancers, means grabbing another gear rarely seems terribly urgent. The thing is almost eerily smooth. On top of that, it produces so much torque-more than a Panigale V4, actually-and revs so quickly that loafing around in low gear can hardly be considered loafing.
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