overall verdict
A bike for the kind of people who want to customise their Harley but want
someone to do all the thinking and work for them. Ride it down any street and
you can see people’s heads turning and mouthing the word Harley as you chug
past, legs wide astride, hunkered down low in the custom seat watching passers
by look at their own reflections as it rolls past. If you’re shy, this isn’t
the bike for you.
Engine
Our particular test bike suffered from a fuelling problem unfortunately,
though we know of other bikes without problems. On our test bike just where you
want the power, winding it on gently at 2000rpm, feeling it potato-potato and
vibrate gently the bike then sinks into a torque and power black hole. On a
dyno the power curve would look like a rollercoaster. The power dips, like it
can’t breath properly and then comes back again at 3200rpm. When it comes in
the delivery is noticeably stronger than the standard bike, revs harder and
faster, but then it’s all over by 5500rpm.
Ride and Handling
It’s a massive hunk of metal and where some Japanese cruisers are kitted
out with plated plastic, the incredible 340kg dry weight of this bike gives a
real sense of owning the road. It’s incredibly heavy to move around out of the
garage but get it going and the low-slung weight makes you feel like you’re
ploughing through the road, and riding some real American Iron with a
comfortable seat and a 180-mile tank range.
And once on the move it’s very easy to manoeuvre, but just watch the
footboards as they will touch down leaving the car park at work.
Equipment
In Harley’s world Convertible means you can have a full dress tourer and
ten minutes later whip off the screen, leather saddlebags and pillion seat and
have an aggressive looking cruiser for town posing.
As well as those removable parts there’s also lashings of chrome, retro
style full-wrap mudguards, custom style chrome ‘Stinger’ wheels, a 200-section
rear tyre, a digital speedo and analogue tacho using the trademark CVO
aluminium background, special custom paint that’s hand-painted at factory.
Quality and Reliability
There’s so few of these big-bore CVO bikes on the road that there’s no
reported problems, and as we said, this bike had a unique problem with its
power delivery, some time in the workshop would sort that out we’re in no doubt
of that.
Value
It’s £23,490. So whether or not that’s value depends on if you have £24,000
to spend on a motorcycle, we don’t, but if you want something truly unique then
this certainly is special. With resale values of Harleys so high and this bike
being so rare you’re unlikely to lose much money on it in the first couple of
years of ownership.
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