NAME DROPPING

The Sportster is dead, long live the Sportster. One of my all-time favourite motorcycles, the Harley-Davidson Sportster is no more. There’s an all-new model to replace it called the Sportster S, which, apart from the name, has exactly nothing in common with its ageless predecessor.

Yes, times change and we have to change with it. I get all that. I remember testing the second-generation Ducati 900SS for Streetbike 30 years ago. I loved it so much that I bought one a few years later and still have it, but as a former owner of an original bevel-drive model, I was so appalled they’d given it that name I called the feature “The Great Pretender”. Awesome bike, but couldn’t they have named it something else?

With hindsight, the