We’ve been a bit light on new models from The Motor Company this year, and on first inspection this might look like just another Electra Glide but this is a Tourer for the analogue generation.
Stripped-back to the bare minimum, this is almost a Road King with a batwing fairing and it’s certainly Harley’s least expensive Electra, but it’s less a bargain basement bagger and more a statement: a raw tourer without the frills.
No Boom!Box, little chrome – polished covers rather than chrome, although it does avoid going down the dark custom route by having chrome trims – and few of the ornaments that you’ll find on a Road King below or a Street Glide above, the Electra Glide Standard is ‘just’ a tourer … not unlike the original Electra Glide and incredibly similar to my 1996 FLHT.
If Harley’s P&A catalogue – or Kuryakyn’s – doesn’t offer a piece of trim to hold a range of phone carriers (to fill in the glovebox left behind by the absence of a Boom!Box) then someone isn’t paying attention.
It will be very interesting to see whether there is a market for a simple tourer, because that’s what it is.
Not actually a cheap tourer – add a pillion seat and footrests and you’ll already making in-roads into the £1,360 saving compared to a Street Glide – and then the lack of chrome on the engine and its ‘available in any colour, as long as it is Vivid Black’ start to put limits on it. And you’ll be ever-mindful that you can save yourself £700 and buy a Road King, which has a pillion pad and footrests and all the chrome that Harley’s domestic market loves so much.
But – and it’s a big but – if you want the improved weather protection of the Batwing with a taller screen than the Street Glide, in clear, but not the distractions of 21st century electronics, this looks like a very interesting addition to the range.
… I wonder whether it’ll take the Aerocharger Turbo off my old FLHT?
… as I say, a statement bike.