2015 HARLEY-DAVIDSON ROAD GLIDE SPECIAL | FIRST RIDE

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When the Road Glide was cut from the Motor Company lineup in 2014, no one believed it was gone forever. This bike is an integral part of Harley-Davidson’s one-two bagger punch, the right cross that follows the best-selling Street Glide’s left jab. We all knew its absence was just a quick pause to clear the pipeline for a retooled Road Glide, one that incorporated the same Project Rushmore updates that revitalized the Street Glide platform last year. This is that bike.

Project Rushmore’s many functional upgrades, including One-Touch hard saddlebags (the lids open with one finger), Reflex linked brakes, electronic cruise control, and revised hand controls that extend the One-Touch philosophy to the supremely intuitive Boom! Box infotainment system (nearly every command can be completed by pushing a single button or toggling a joystick once), are incorporated into this new Road Glide. The powertrain is updated, too, with the High Output Twin Cam 103 V-twin that debuted last year, paired with the Cruise Drive 6-speed transmission with its light-action hydraulic clutch that was also new for 2014.

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The Road Glide’s frame-mounted shark-nose fairing has been comprehensively overhauled this year in an effort to improve aesthetics, aerodynamics, and touring comfort. Sharper styling gives an even nastier look, while a trio of new, wind tunnel-developed Splitstream adjustable vents hugely improve airflow, says Harley. A horizontal vent under the tinted eyebrow windscreen is meant to reduce head buffeting, while massive vents on either side of the headlights—big enough to stick your hand through—route cooling air directly over the rider, which is much appreciated on a hot day like the one we enjoyed at Sturgis. A new, higher handlebar also sweeps back further, partially to clear the lids for new fairing pockets, but we prefer the older, flatter bar.

The H.O. 103 engine is a known quantity that performs exactly as expected in this capacity. With a claimed 105 pound-feet of torque available at just 3,250 rpm, stoplight acceleration is as robust as highway cruising is relaxed, and the sweet tune from the tapered chrome duals should have the aftermarket worried. Ride quality from the air-adjustable suspension is impressively plush at low speeds and over smooth pavement yet stiff enough for moderately spirited riding—aided by bigger, 49mm forks with stiffer triple clamps, more Rushmore improvements—but with just 2.1 inches of rear-wheel travel beware of hard hits. Relatively light, 5-spoke Enforcer wheels—also new last year—help handling even more. Reflex linked brakes balance forces front and rear and allow you to more consistently use the unexpectedly powerful rear brake—as certain Harley riders are wont to do—without activating the ABS.

The high-spec Road Glide Special we rode comes with the upgraded Boom! Box 6.5GT infotainment system that adds a touch screen and GPS navigation, HD Smart Security, linked brakes and ABS, hand-adjustable rear suspension, and hand-laid pin striping for a $2,300 premium over the standard, $20,899 Road Glide (in Vivid Black; colors add $500 to both the base model and the Special). The Road Glide, Harley-Davidson’s original badass bagger, is back.

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Future Shock Whispering Harleys

Sales of electric motorcycles are just a tiny slice of a market that totals about 370,000 road-legal motorcycles a year in the United States, but Harley-Davidson, the proudly American maker of rumbling, brawny heavyweights, is hinting that it would like to change that.

On June 24, the Milwaukee-based company will introduce its Project LiveWire Experience, a traveling event that will offer licensed riders a chance to try an electric Harley. The program, for which some 30 prototype electric motorcycles were built, heads from New York to Chicago and will then work its way along Route 66 to Santa Monica, Calif., stopping at dealerships and other locations along the way. Details on scheduling and sites are available at project.harley-davidson.com.

Harley-Davidson is certainly not the obvious candidate to lead the movement toward a whisper-quiet, electron-motivated future. The 111-year-old company has thrived by selling a line consisting mainly of retro-style bikes that recall models from a half-century ago.

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In recent years, though, the downturn and the inevitable aging of its boomer customers made it clear that survival would depend on more diverse market appeal. The company recently introduced two smaller, more modern models, the Street 500 and Street 750, designed to appeal to younger customers around the world.

The LiveWire Project is the next major effort, and one that could put Harley ahead of its global competitors in the race to make a commercially successful electric machine. American companies like Zero and Brammo have introduced innovative and attractive bikes, but the high price of lithium-ion batteries and the small number of brand dealerships has limited growth.

Harley-Davidson says it has no plans at this time to produce and sell the LiveWire to the public. Still, it has clearly made a significant investment in bringing the prototypes up to the expected levels of style, performance and finish necessary before letting the public try them (and then splashing their impressions all over the Internet).

The goal, Harley said, was to create a machine with the personality and desirability that existing electric motorcycles lack.

“It’s ultimately a challenge about whether riding an electric motorcycle can be an emotional experience or only a rational one,” Mark-Hans Richer, Harley-Davidson’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said.

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“To be a true Harley, it has to have character,” Mr. Richer said. “It has to be cool. It has to make you feel something important about yourself.”

Mr. Richer added that a static display of the bike was not sufficient. “We didn’t want this sitting on a turntable somewhere, with an attractive model standing around handing out brochures,” he said.

The LiveWire was designed and developed in Harley-Davidson’s Wauwatosa, Wis., product development center and hand-built in the center’s basement.

Harley is not disclosing the range, power, acceleration or top speed of the experimental LiveWire machines.

“We’re not getting into spec wars at this time,” Mr. Richer said. “The point is how you feel riding it.”

As it happens, the character of an electric bike aligns well with the expectations of Harley customers, who are used to engines that cruise happily at low r.p.m.

“An electric motor creates a lot of low-end torque,” Mr. Richer said. “We find people very pleasantly surprised by that.”

The demonstration bikes will be charged using 240-volt Level 2 chargers, taking about 3.5 hours to fully replenish the battery pack, according to Jeff Richlen, chief engineer of product development.

While he would not reveal the capacity of the lithium-ion battery pack, the charging time and the motorcycle’s overall weight of 460 pounds suggest a pack of 12 to 14 kilowatt-hours — a little less than a Chevrolet Volt.

The silent operation of electric motorcycles is an attraction to many customers, but in this respect, as in so many other areas, Harley-Davidson has gone its own way. The electric motor, which can be seen as a machined-aluminum cylinder under the bike, is positioned fore-and-aft. The gears it uses to send power to a single-speed transmission are intentionally designed to make a distinctive sound. The final drive to the wheel is by a belt, typical of gasoline Harleys.

“It sounds like a turbine when you are on the bike,” Mr. Richlen said. “And from the side, as it goes past, it sounds like a jet.”

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