00:00The most important Harley-Davidson in the last 50 years?
00:03This bike.
00:04Well, not this bike, but the bike that inspired it, the 1971 FX Superglide.
00:10We owe the existence of the Superglide and the factory custom to a young designer not
00:14long out of art school.
00:16And that young designer was Willie G. Davidson, heir to the Harley-Davidson throne.
00:21Willie and the team knew they needed something new.
00:23They needed something that wasn't a touring bike and wasn't a sportster.
00:27They put those two together and gave birth to the FX Superglide.
00:31Cruisers as we know it really didn't exist before that moment, and it changed the direction
00:37of the American V-Twin.
00:43Harley-Davidson owned heavyweight touring in the late 60s, but the bikes were considered
00:48not so much nostalgic as dated.
00:50The sportster, meanwhile, was the sporty bike that had been taken on the British since 1957,
00:54but the British were no longer the problem.
00:57Honda had released the inline-4 CB750 in 1969, and Kawasaki was right behind with the Z1.
01:04The relevance of the sportster as an American superbike was ending.
01:08Willie G. had seen what owners and custom builders had been doing to the motor company's bikes
01:12as the custom scene exploded in the 1960s, and he made the leap with the FX.
01:17The FX combined the FL touring chassis with the light and live sportster front end, all
01:22the way down to the headlight eyebrow.
01:24The bike was powered by the 74 cubic inch shovel head, and the touring chassis was stripped down
01:29as much as possible, even removing the electric starter, making the new bike kick only.
01:34And so, an electric glide became the super glide.
01:38It was Willie G. Davidson's first whole bike design for Harley-Davidson.
01:42The thing that is incredibly special about Willie is his ability to recognize culture and weave
01:50that into the product.
01:51So, you know, you think about choppers and how these guys were swapping bits and pieces
01:58to change the attitude of the motorcycle.
02:01And I think that that just taps into Willie's ability to notice that and pick up on it and
02:10really leverage it and, you know, kind of take this FL and be like, man, this would look
02:17really cool if I put a slimmed down sportster front end on it and I, you know, took all
02:23of this extra, you know, touring accessory off of it and just made it a more slimmed down
02:30tier motorcycle.
02:31Um, and, uh, the process of doing that just drastically changed its, its appearance and
02:36its proportion and its attitude.
02:38You know, that's a, that's a really unique moment because it is kind of the birth of this
02:43entire segment that is, is kind of more or less shaped American motorcycling for the last
02:4955 years in terms of what a cruiser is.
02:52Which is why 55 years later, Harley has brought back the Superglide and for the first time
02:56on the soft tail platform.
02:58The special edition FXD is limited to 2,500 numbered units for the U.S. and Canadian markets
03:04only and retails for $15,999.
03:06There's no surprise that Superglide rides exactly how you'd expect a soft tail to ride.
03:12And they unified the chassis between the Dyna and the soft tail and updated it for better
03:16performance and stiffer frame and mono shock for everything.
03:22It really did technically elevate the motorcycle.
03:25Steering is light and precise, particularly with these wheel sizes.
03:28These are much narrower wheels than say you did on a fat boy and the fat boy has a very
03:33distinct riding feeling.
03:36When we finally saw the new Superglide, we had to ask, why no Boatail, who was such an
03:41iconic image of the time?
03:42As a designer, I really appreciate it.
03:45You know, I think, to me, even some of the surface on the original seating, they kind of had
03:54these chamfered...
03:55It sort of reminds me of some of the automotive trends that you would see at the time.
04:01You know, I'm thinking about interiors in a Bertone car or something like that.
04:06And then the kind of the overt proportion of the Boatail, you know, Willie was clued in.
04:13And if you think about, like, Tracy body kits and just crazy things were being done with
04:18people just using Bondo in garages, right, to form choppers and king and queen seats with
04:24all this form.
04:25I think he was tapping into that in that production sense with the Boatail.
04:29So, um, and certainly looking for a way to, to visually, you know, kind of put an exclamation
04:36point on, like, this is not an FL, but the sales did not lie that year.
04:41Yeah, it did so poorly that they, they quickly were like, whoops.
04:47Um, and unfortunately, uh, you know, many of that fiberglass made its way into, into dust
04:54bins, um, which makes people cringe today.
04:58If no Boatail, what makes this 2026 and a half Harley a superglide?
05:02First and foremost, it was like, okay, I'm going to put a, I'm going to go with the larger,
05:06the larger fuel tank, right?
05:08Because it gives me that iconic teardrop shape.
05:10I'm going to go with the center council, the gauge mounted up there to get that, that profile
05:15and that silhouette.
05:16We're going to change some of the finishes around.
05:18It's got to have laced wheels, you know, clearly the homage to the, the kind of sparkle
05:24white paint, um, you know, we've got our white on its pearls, it's got a lot of flake in
05:28it.
05:28And of course the red and blue graphics on that five gallon tank and the fenders, all
05:33inspired by the original superglide.
05:34And of course there is the return of Chrome and lots of it.
05:38We called this video the return of the superglide, but maybe it should have been the re-return
05:42of the superglide because Harley Davidson brought this bike back in 2006 for the 35th anniversary.
05:48We marked this in the pages of Cycleworld by having Cook Nelson ride it from his New England
05:53home to Milwaukee to meet with Willie G and give us a proper American road trip on one
05:57of the most American motorcycles ever conceived.
06:00Nielsen wrote the first road test of the superglide for Cycle magazine in 1970, the cover
06:05for which read Harley Davidson's outrageous superglide.
06:09Nielsen said of the superglide in 1970, accelerate it does, corner it does, stop it does not.
06:15Adding that the single leading shoe front brake from the much lighter sports are faded like
06:20an echo.
06:21The 2026 and a half version has the essential soft tail underpinning so it's counterbalanced
06:25170 inch Milwaukee 8 and 6 speed transmission make it fly.
06:29The stiff chassis and taut damping make it handle and the dual disc brakes haul it down from high
06:34speed without even an echo of fade.
06:36At 60 miles an hour you're at about 2350 RPM.
06:41It's very chill, very chill but it's also fast like if you really rev this thing up, it pulls
06:48hard.
06:49The chassis is really taut, the fork tubes are huge, it is a laid back cruiser motorcycle but
06:53the corner clearance is decent especially with the mid controls and it's really fun on the
06:57back road.
07:01As I parked the superglide in the late afternoon light to absorb the stance, color and finishes,
07:06the bobbeder fender struck me as more street bob than the original superglide, as are the
07:11mini abes.
07:12But I concede for the current customer and trends, the superglide does a great job of bringing
07:16the feelings.
07:17Still, I'm personally shopping for a different handlebar and I'd do my damnedest to get a
07:21sports star eyebrow mounted on that small crumbed headlight.
07:24Harley has leaned into the 2 into 1 exhaust on current softtails because the combined bigger
07:28muffler volume gets the bike through noise and tailpipe emissions testing easier while
07:33making more power.
07:34It's not a dead ringer for the 2 into 1 of the original FX, but the new superglide system
07:38does a very good job of recalling the exhaust used on the 1977 FXS Lowrider, one of the superglide's
07:45offspring and a huge seller on its debut.
07:48The 117 Milwaukee 8 is a great running engine with loads of torque.
07:52Recent dyno runs on similar engines have shown that we get 94 horsepower and 118 foot-pounds,
07:57refreshingly not far off the 98 horsepower and 120 foot-pounds claimed by Harley-Davidson
08:02for the superglide.
08:03The 1971 superglide represented a huge, audacious change in the very spiritual position of Harley-Davidson.
08:11And in fact, it tracked with the spiritual position of its designer, Willie G, who you can't deny
08:16is genetically Harley-Davidson and who very much evolved with the company, leading it in
08:22this important way during a critical time.
08:24One of the things that I love right now at the Harley-Davidson Museum, there's an exhibit that kind of
08:29talks
08:29about the history of design a little bit.
08:31And they show these photos of Willie where he's a young, you know, must have been right out of school
08:38at Art Center.
08:39He cut his teeth.
08:42Interning is an ID guy at Brooke Stevens.
08:44But he just looks like he's got the typical 50s, Sergeant Slaughter, flat-top haircut, and these big, thickened
08:52black glasses, and, you know, he's wearing a suit.
08:54It's very much like how the design staff would have looked at, you know, GM in 1962.
09:01And then, you know, just a few short years later, when he comes into Harley and really takes on the
09:07role of,
09:08you know, head of design and forming our first styling and design department,
09:13you see how quickly his appearance starts to change.
09:17And I think it's the effect of absorbing that cultural moment that was motorcycling in the late 60s.
09:28And Superglide is kind of, you know, for me and for us as a company, it's that birth of recognizing
09:36that, like, oh, Harleys really are more than machines.
09:39There's a uniqueness to this riding experience.
09:44And when you tap into that, you know, you're starting to go beyond specification and you're talking about intangible value.
09:54Perhaps the Superglide was that moment where the intangible value started to come into focus.
09:59The cultural weight of the 45-degree Big Twin, its sound and feel, it seemed to feed the generational loyalty
10:06and history of Harley's customers in a new way.
10:09The Superglide certainly helped bridge the gap to the desperately needed Evolution Big Twin of 1984.
10:15That new engine launched an era of measured technical progress that backed up a spiritual, intangible experience with a very
10:22real tangible value.
10:23These tangibles and intangibles are embodied in the 2026.5 Superglide.
10:28In some ways, its existence begs the question, what's the next FX?
10:33The Superglide.
10:34The Superglide.
10:36The Superglide.
10:37The Superglide.
