Softail Lowrider Review
Harley-Davidson Low Rider S review: It really brings out the Goldilocks in me
Mirror Motorbikes writer Geoff Hill finds Softails are the perfect middle ground between Harley Davidson's tiddlers and monsters - and you don't even need to wear a floral dress and skip through the woods to appreciate them
Harley Softails bring out the Goldilocks in me.
And by that I don't mean dressing up in a nice floral dress and skipping gaily through the woods, although never say never.
Nor do I mean breaking and entering the home of an innocent bear family, eating their porridge, destroying their chair and sleeping in their beds.
No, I mean that, in the same way the little blonde criminal preferred the middle porridge, chair and bed, I really like Softails because they represent the perfect middle ground of Harleys.
They're not as small as bikes such as the Sportster 883 and the Street 750, which are great for short blasts but not all-day comfort, and not as unwieldy as beasts like the Electra Glide, which are great for riding in a straight line across Texas, but slightly tricky when doing U-turns in a car park.
Nope, with big engines, relatively light weight and decent handling, give me Softails every time.
Which brings me to the three top models in the range – the new Low Rider S, Street Bob and Fat Bob.
Since I'm a gnat's whisker short of 6ft 8in, the Low Rider S was the obvious one to start on.
The previous version of this was proof that the simplest ideas are usually the best – in this case, take the whopping 1801cc Screamin' Eagle engine usually fitted to the full-fat cruisers of Harley's made-to-order CVO range, and shoehorn it into a stripped-down version of one of the lighter Dyna machines.
This latest version now has the more balanced 1861cc Milwaukee-Eight engine, semi liquid-cooled and less likely to make all your fillings fall out before the first junction.
First impressions weren't good, though – the speedo and tacho are still on the tank as in the previous version, meaning you have to take your eyes off the road to check them, and even more weirdly, there's a perfectly good blank space at the back of the flyscreen binnacle above the bars where they could have gone.
More annoyingly, my feet kept getting tangled with the footpegs every time I stopped and had to put them on the ground, until I figured out that the reason the pegs were in the way of my feet was because they were where my feet should be. D'oh!
After that road-to-Damascus revelation, things got better. The riding position is comfortable but not too laid-back, the skinny front tyre makes for nimble cornering and that monster engine has huge grunt for effortless overtakes and powering out of bends, accompanied by that glorious V-twin snore – possibly the most evocative of engine sounds.
Mind you, its lack of traction control made itself felt when I got on the gas coming out of a slow corner and the back end did an elegant shimmy before stepping back into line.
The Street Bob has the same skinny front tyre, but less comfortable high-rise bars which, combined with forward pegs, doesn't give it the same point-and-shoot cornering as the Low Rider S.
It's also got the smallest speedo in the world – a digital panel which looks like a molecule that's been run over by a steamroller.
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As for the Fat Bob, the clue's in the name, with a wide front tyre which makes it more of a haul around corners than the other two.
So all in all, I think Goldilocks would pick not only the Softails out of all the Harleys, but the Low Rider S out of the Softails.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to decide which floral dress to wear for a walk in the woods.
Engine: 1868cc, semi liquid-cooled, V-twin
Power: 91.7bhp @ 5,020rpm
Torque: 114.3lb ft @ 3,000rpm
Colours: Black, silver
Price: From £15,825
MotorcycleDirect.co.uk
Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/motoring/harley-davidson-low-rider-review-21732018
