When will I be FAMOUS
BEING THE PR PERSON FOR HARLEY-DAVIDSON must be a frustrating business. The company has made several motorcycles that were absolute sales duds right up until the moment they went out of production – and then they suddenly become hopelessly desirable. Take the sexy but unsellable XLCR Café Racer, a motorcycle of hopeless ergonomics and jawdroppingly beautiful looks that lasted just a few years in the late 1970s, yet is now highly sought-after. Or the XR1000, a tyre-shredding powerhouse fitted with a brilliant, uprated Sportster engine featuring a pair of racing heads so it could be fitted with individual carbs. The XR1000 was launched in 1983 and lasted to 1984 as a road-homologated version of the legendary XR750 flat tracker. Much pricier than the standard Sportster, it soon vanished from showrooms and promptly became a valuable cult item.
Then, in 2008, Harley-Davidson launched the XR1200 in another attempt to capture the performance bruiser market. Codename ‘Steroid’ followed pleas from Harley Europe asking for an air-cooled, big V-twin that wasn’t a tourer or a cruiser, but one that handled and performed like a big, chunky sportsbike. For reasons best known to itself, it believed that this sort of bike would attract buyers on this side of the pond and possibly attract a younger demographic. Harley-Davidson had been terrified for decades that its core market was getting older and would soon evaporate. At this point, Harley’s pursuit
