{"id":1860,"date":"2018-02-20T18:29:05","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T18:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/?p=1860"},"modified":"2018-03-13T20:03:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T20:03:29","slug":"sycamore-harley-davidson-wins-battle-of-the-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/sycamore-harley-davidson-wins-battle-of-the-kings\/","title":{"rendered":"Sycamore Harley-Davidson wins Battle of the Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/x4LO_oJMsmA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For Harley-Davidson&#8217;s 2018 Battle of the Kings, the rules changed.<\/p>\n<p>No longer a mandated competition, the fifteen entrants had a wider choice of donor bikes ranging from the Street and Street Rod, through the Iron, Forty-Eight and Roadster Sportsters up to the Street Bob and Fat Bob from the new Softail range. This opened up new possibilities and fresh challenges, reigned in only by a requirement to do the work for \u00a35,500 (\u20ac6,000) and that the result be road-legal.<\/p>\n<p>12,000 on-line public votes whittled the fifteen down to five, which went to the London Motorcycle Show at ExCeL, where a panel of judges comprising senior editorial of MCN, Built, Bike Social and American-V, and Harley-Davidson enthusiast and racer, Shakey Byrne, had the arduous task of picking a winner.<\/p>\n<p>Having been one of those five, with the benefit of seeing them very close-up, I can tell you that it was an arduous task and was glad that the judging was broken down into three categories: concept, originality and execution. For my part, that means I&#8217;ve got absolutely no idea who I scored highest overall, because I judged each on its merits.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think that necessarily did the Shaw&#8217;s and Guildford bikes any favours in the originality department as despite many significant differences, some startling similarities made them look like variations on a single theme.<\/p>\n<p>It is perhaps ironic that the only Sportster to make the top five \u2013 Sycamore Harley-Davidson&#8217;s &#8216;Alley Rat&#8217; \u2013 was the ultimate winner, its distressed finish and use of AMF-era graphics being right on the money at the moment &#8230; and just days before the launch of the new XL1200 Iron!<\/p>\n<p>Second place fell to the Street Bob with the most one-off fabrication \u2013 Maidstone Harley-Davidson&#8217;s &#8216;Ottoway&#8217;, which doffed its cap to Harley&#8217;s earliest machinery and in a shade of grey that will always be associated with silence.<\/p>\n<p>A very different grey that paid tribute to the US Navy adorned West Coast Harley-Davidson&#8217;s &#8216;Enlisted&#8217;: the most subtle of the five, which owed its style to the classic Hydra Glide, and won&#8217;t be the first FX \u2013 another Street Bob \u2013 to make the transition to an FL, but it&#8217;s not a well-trodden path.<\/p>\n<p>Alley Rat will now go head-to-head against other national finalists in a European-wide 2018 Grand Finale.<\/p>\n<table class=\"data\" border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellspacing=\"1\" cellpadding=\"1\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th>Dealer<\/th>\n<th>Base model<\/th>\n<th>Bike&#8217;s name<\/th>\n<th>Custom King<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Guildford H-D<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Softail Street Bob<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">The Petrali Racer<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Michael Noble<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Maidstone H-D<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Softail Street Bob<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Ottaway<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Group Collective<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Shaw H-D<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Softail Street Bob<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">The Edge<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Neil Sefton<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Sycamore H-D<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Sportster Forty-Eight<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Alley Rat<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Todd Meynell<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">West Coast H-D<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Softail Street Bob<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Enlisted<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">Fraser Hine<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Harley-Davidson&#8217;s 2018 Battle of the Kings, the rules changed. No longer a mandated competition, the fifteen entrants had a wider choice of donor bikes &#8230; <\/p>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/sycamore-harley-davidson-wins-battle-of-the-kings\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Sycamore Harley-Davidson wins Battle of the Kings","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harley-davidson","category-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Sycamore_winner.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yyfo-u0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1860"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1874,"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions\/1874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american-v.cso2w.com\/hub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}