Big Rock Grunt Doubler
Though your average, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill Dyna Super Glide Sport is quite the street sleeper anyway, Kirk Herbert and his team of techies at Nottingham's Big Rock Harley-Davidson have come up with this bog standard looking beastie which has the potential to really stuff the Sunday Sport boys where it hurts. Though it does look remarkably unprepossessing; the Big Rock Special Edition boasts over 100ft.lb of torque – a claimed 46% increase over the standard model, and a healthy 87bhp – again, a good 50% over stock figures. Whahey!

Bored out to 1550cc with flat top pistons and sporting a Mikuni 42mm carb wearing an innocent looking sporty airfilter, the bike's also seen a multitude of Harley's own Screamin' Eagle performance goodies including, unsurprisingly, the ignition module and the coil.

Commissioned by Simon Garrett the General Manager at Big Rock, the special remains a publicity attracting worthy one-off ... at the moment. The Super Glide saw just about £2000 worth of performance enhancing goodies and at the time of writing was offered, in this seriously sorted state, for £12,195 OTR – which isn't, really, that bad for what they're claiming you get.

Big Rock Harley-Davidson is based in Church Street, Stapleford, Nottingham, England.

  Tel: +44 (0)115 949 9800.

For further information go to: www.bigrock.co.uk

Late Buell Mods
A couple of last minute – like, as soon as they hit the showroom floor – mods have been spotted on the 2001 model year Cyclone and Lightning. We knew about the revised graphics, and the modified gear linkage but it seems that the revised linkage has been revised further and gets a kink at the pivot point rather than the economy of line promised by the pictures in this year's brochure, but then perhaps it was just too pretty for the bike that even its manufacturer rates as ugly.

Also, in addition to the year-on-year suspension tweaks, this year brings a remote reservoir for the underslung shock which will serve to provide greater cooling for the unit's precious fluids.

We're waiting for confirmation as to the details – we heard the word "recall" but it remains to be seen whether any escaped captivity before being uprated. Meantime, you can still find 2000 models in most showrooms, and if you're in the right place at the right time, there's a Stage 1 Millennium Cyclone doing the rounds wherever Harley-Davidson UK promotional people congregate.

Fat Sales
Another Record Year for Harley UK

Cock-a-hoop with themselves to be sure, Harley UK this January released figures which boast their sales up for a third successive year in 2000, selling a very creditable 2,892 new bikes in Britain – up 12%, while all other manufacturers in the market suffered a sales drop of 6% (er, at least if you only count 650cc machines and above). Surprising, well certainly to me, is the fact that Harley's best selling model last year (accounting for 14% of those sales) was the good old Fat Boy, leaving 883 Sportsters, which would have been my guess, running a close second with 13% overall.

Blimey.

Harley partly credit those 404 new Fat Boys now prowling the damp and dismal streets of Britain to the journalists and test riders of the respected weekly biker bible MotorCycle News voting the bike top honours in their prestigious (well, fairly) 'Best Custom/Cruiser' award back in November. Especially cool when you consider the 2 other finalists vying for the hard fought title were Yamaha's extremely impressive XV1600 WildStar super cruiser and the quirky, ground breaking BMW1200C Independent.
(Roadtest of 2000 Fat Boy: report and pictures).

Blazing Buells
Admittedly not exactly news on the scale of "Hey everyone, we're at war" but this year's limited paint run of blazing orange trimmed Buell M2 Cyclones do look the absolute business you've got to admit. Only 20 of the orangey-bit options are to be officially imported into Britain, and will enhance only the Carbon Black, Blue Streak and Volcano Grey M2 colour variants. Add £150 to the OTR price of a standard M2 Cyclone of £6,695 and it's yours pal.

... I want to have this grey one's babies.

Eight New Official H-D Dealers to open around Britain in 2001
At the moment there are 20 official Harley dealers dotted around Britain, Northern Ireland and the Channel Isles but further Harley UK plans this year announced by a chuffed MD Garry Brumfitt include the expected opening of no less than eight (count-em!) new dealerships here,  which kicked off with the official opening of the swish new and decidedly hi-tech Centurion dealership in Chester, a do Am-V got invited to a couple of weeks back.
(Chester Centurion officially Opens: report and pictures).

Super-Twins Finals Sponsored by Harley
Garry Brumfitt also took the opportunity to announce that the respected European Super-Twin  drag race series finals are to be sponsored by Harley UK this year, fabulous news hopefully to all the racers and followers of this exciting and extremely competitive series, the serious backing from H-D should make for a classic year. Garry also mentioned that Buell bruising stunt rider Craig Jones has been signed up by the MotorCo ..... presumably to continue his cunning stunts under the Harley banner so with the added benefit of a (practically) endless supply of Buells and not, though it could be a bit more of a laugh, chauffeur Harley ride outs!

Heavy Reading
Launched on the 9th of January this year, to a breathless public ... Yup, it's the Harley-Davidson 2001 Genuine Parts & Accessory Brochure, boasting over 100,000 branded goodies spread out over 720 pages of right riveting reading. If you just have to have the latest whizz-bang H-D branded gee-gaw or need to order an officially sanctioned crate of oil, this is the book for you. Available from any official dealer now and weighing in at an unbelievable 1.75kg, at least you can cancel the official H-D doorstop...

...... er, just who got to weigh the book? I mean, it's not like, y'know, normal behaviour, not really.

When Two Tribes Go To War
The Indian name is hotly contested in a number of countries and it is unlikely that there will ever be a single manufacturer to fly the flag that once made Harley riders see red. The Australians have a couple of pre-production engines that continue the flathead legacy and are probably much more closely aligned to the Indians of old,  but the real battle is being fought on either side of the Atlantic with two distinctly different motorcycles in simultaneous production.

In the blue corner (well, blue with a white diagonal cross on it) we have Alan Forbes' Indian Motorcycle Ltd and an in-line four-cylinder Dakota 4, based around the Swedish-build Wiking – so, blue with a horizontal yellow cross then – which he launched to an unsuspecting world at the 2000 NEC Bike Show, while in the red corner (well, red horizontal stripes ... and with a bit of blue above it, liberally sprinkled with white stars) is the Indian Motorcycle Company of America (IMCOA) with two models both based around S&S-built Superstock 1422 (88-cube) motor.

Both feature the Indian head logo, deep valanced mudguards and are stylistically indebted to the bikes that made the name famous ... who said Kawasaki?

The bizarre stuff doesn't end there: the Wiking's engine is largely derived from bits of Volvo, with a BMW bike gearbox kicking out to a shaft drive rear end – held in what looks suspiciously like a Cossack rear subframe to me. The Wiking project started life as a project for Swedish custom car magazine, Wheels, and is still going strong by the looks of the website set up to sell them, even if the asking price is a long way removed from the original idea of a people's bike.

The Indian name has been passed from pillar to post since Brockhouse Ltd bought and closed down the Springfield plant in the early fifties but the certainty is that the American courts are of the opinion that all rights were rationalised in the US and it now belongs to IMCOA ... in the US. Exactly how that affects the Scottish concern is not abundently clear, but as long as the Dakota 4 doesn't stray Stateside, and while the Chief and the Scout stay within their reservation, our scalps should be safe. If all else fails, though, form your bikes into a circle and get the women and children in the middle ...

Surrey Sporty With Storz Sex
At the behest of their general manager Paul Stephenson, Surrey Harley-Davidson let loose their tech people over a three week period and created a creditable facsimile of the seriously horny FlatTrack styled ironhead 750 and 1000cc XR Roadsters of yore. Based around a stock 1200 Sportster, the Surrey team have utilised, interestingly, non-Harley parts - like the 2 into 2 SuperTrapp exhaust and perhaps most importantly, a full-on Storz body kit and some of their choice performance goodies.

The Surrey conversion, including the paint, brings the price of the £7,295 1200 Sporty OTR up to ten grand (bar a fiver) ... but lookit it ... you would wouldn't you? Phoaarr!

However, what I find particularly interesting, is this fairly recent trend for official Harley-Davidson dealerships in the UK to produce very nice one-offs using non-licensed parts (see Nott's Big Rock's effort above!) ... is the MotorCo relaxing it's rules? Are dealerships just giving up and joining the rest of the Harley owning public by using the best parts available that they can afford? Or are rogue UK dealerships going all rebellious and raising two fingers at the establishment? We need to know.

Surrey Harley-Davidson is based in the High Street, Dorking. England

Tel: +44 (0) 1306 883825.

Rocking the DJ
Guess which hell-raising, tattooed love god, and favourite son of Stoke-On-Trent bought himself a new Harley last year?

Slash? Well, probably.

They Think It's All Over's Nick Hancock? Well, I'm prepared to believe he may be tattooed, ... but a love god? Perhaps not then.

No, Robbie Williams.

Robbie Williams?

Yes, the former Take That member is now the proud owner of a Fat Boy - and there must be a joke in there regarding his long-term rivalry with one-time colleague Gary Barlow, if only I could think of one. I'm too gutted that I should have knowledge of these people and their past!

Excelsior-Henderson to bounce back
Those of you who've been wondering what happened to the emerging Excelsior-Henderson company might be interested – if not especially pleased – to know that the chances of getting your hands on a 2001 model are very slim. It seems as though the company overstretched itself in developing the machines last year which ultimately forced them into bankruptcy. It's not all bad news, however, because just as we have administration order in the UK to try and get companies that show promise to fight through their problems, s the Americans have a thing called Chapter 11 to do much the same thing.

So it was that in September last year, Excelsior- Henderson emerged from Bankruptcy with a plan to restructure and reorganise under Chapter 11, In the statements given by the company it was anticipated that the revised plan would allow the company to secure external funding and move forwards.

The net result was EH. Partners Inc buying Excelsior-Henderson in October and setting 2001 aside as a development and planning year getting everything in place for a market re-entry in 2002 giving the company time to restaff the organisation as well as rebuild a dealer network, fine-tune the model range and develop a broader range of both motorcycles and accessories. A specific intention is make sure the product is market-ready at launch.

At the helm of the new enterprise as CEO is John Hetterick who was previously CEO at Rollerblade and formerly a president of Tonka International, and COO Jon Carlson who, among other things, held an executive position with Deere and Company – both of which must be a leader-writer's dream for those who still subscribe to the view that big American bikes are toys with tractor-like engineering. we at American-V, however, wouldn't stoop to such low tricks and wish them all the best in bringing to market the bike that really got our Rich excited when he rode one at Daytona.

Cruisin' in my Harley?
Visitors to the Manchester International Bike Show at that town's GMEX centre would have been treated to the surprise of seeing two pick-ups on display. Granted they had Harleys in the back – and the pick-up beds were almost long enough to accommodate them – and on closer inspection they were quite obviously strongly tied in to the Harley-Davidson image. With the local dealer, Bauer Millett, being a major importer of American 4-wheelers, it made sense to think it might be a special deal through them, but no. This is Motor Company territory and is a cross licensing thing between themselves and Ford.

If you can't survive a moment longer without the ultimate licensed product, prepare your bank manager for a £33k hit on your account but cheer yourself in the knowledge that you'll eventually be sitting in air-conditioned, opulent splendour, surrounded by leather and logos inside a 260bhp V8-powered F150 Ford SuperCrew on your driveway – or in your double garage 'cos it ain't gonna fit in a single: you may even be able to afford the fuel at UK process to run it, but I guess if you've got £33k burning a hole in your pocket, you'll like-as-not be able to stump-up for the go-juice. I say eventually because you won't find these ex-stock: they are a limited edition, and there aren't that many on the planet, let alone in the UK, and the word is that they are already changing hands at above list prices in the US, such is the demand among some Main Street cruisers whose idea of a good night out involves dragging their bike on and off a pick-up to take it to the strip.