ABOUT THE ONLY THING UNIQUE TO THE FX WAS A FIBREGLASS SEAT and that didn’t make it to the second season, but was swapped for a plainer banana seat. They fiddled about a bit with the basic formula over that time, adding an optional electric leg to create the FXE in ’74, and generally switched tanks and generally played with it until, in ’77, it was running an Aermacchi-derived tank, proper two-up seat and a sweeping 2-into-1 exhaust. It had finished its personal evolution, and didn’t change much until it became the 5-speed Super Glide II in ’85.

It was a good-looking bike: very streetable and less of a handful than the dresser that spawned it, but it wasn’t really a custom. In 1977 Willie G had been at it again, and it was joined by the FXS – quite probably the FX Special because there’s no other sensible explanation for the "S". But it wasn’t called the Special: it was called the Low Rider because it rode low. It came out at a time when lowriders had been short-forked, raked-out chops running alongside – let’s face it – some bloody hideous seventies chops. The bottom frame rails could once again be parallel with the ground, and ideally closer than originally intended. It was generally a time of hard-tail frames, affording greater opportunity to get way down low without worrying about the rear suspension travel, and giving a ridiculously low seat height to boot. Harley didn’t rake it out, it would have been suicidal to consider hardtailing it, but they had a good eye for a trend, and a better one for a name. We were invited to "Saddle the storm 27-inches off the ground" and we did, in droves. It was little more than an electric Super Glide with cast wheels, before cast wheels were commonplace, that low-slung seat, pullback risers topped off by drag bars, a new exclusive dash with speedo and tacho fore-and-aft, and a silver paint job adorned with a "beautiful Harley-Davidson decal straight out of 1917". The stance was late-eighties streetfighter: low seat, arms straight ahead but it was too early to realise that in 1977, and buckhorns had replaced the aggressive drag style by the eighties. At almost exactly the same time, the low-rider school of customising moved on to the angular, lower, more heavily styled machines that are more often associated with the name today.

If the AMF Harley-Davidson executives were in any doubt that at least part of their future laid in custom bikes, the Low Rider dispelled them. In its second season it almost overtook the electric and kicker Super Glides in sales terms, and formed a quarter of the factory’s production in its third. The Super Glide was a revelation. The Low Rider was a phenomenon.

It too was modified through its first years, with an odd array of bits and pieces, before being stalked by the very differently shaped 5-speed FXRS Low Glide, which was waiting for the Low Rider tag to become vacant. It did so with the eventual, inevitable demise of the 4-speed range. Success breeds success, and the successful Low Rider tag was applied to a wide variety of things whether appropriate or not and an eclectic array of FXRs rejoiced in the light of its reflected glory, but it all came full circle when the Dyna frame replaced the FXR frame. With the arrival of the 1991 Dyna Sturgis, the original basic lines of the 4-speed resurfaced and the Low Rider could live again, but it took two years before it reclaimed its original silhouette. In 1993 the FXDL Low Rider replaced the 1992 FXDC Dyna Custom, although it was little more than a name change – it was already as close to the shape of the original as it was possible to get … well, but for a pair of buckhorns pullbacks. Did you want to know that the ’91 Sturgis even had drag bars on pullback risers? Thought not.

Having handed back the Low Rider name, the 5-speed FXLR Low Rider Custom, FXRS Sp Low Rider Sport and FXRS-Conv Low Rider Convertible persisted for a time giving a massive selection of options for the model designation. By then "S" meant all sorts of things, but it didn’t really mean Low Rider so it became an L, for Low, creating the FXDL. It was joined in its rebirth by another old favourite from 4-speed days, the Wide Glide, and together they comprised the Dyna Glide range for ’93.

The Dyna chassis had taken five years to develop, work having started as the last 4-speeder was withdrawn. An all-new steel frame with forgings at major junctions for strength, and economy of build, and it was the first Harley frame designed from the ground up using CAD. The chassis held the motor using two rubber-mounted brackets – a sandwich of steel brackets bolted to frame, taking the roll of the bread, a steel bracket from the engine providing the cheese, and layers of rubber, the butter. There was one at the front of the motor and a second beneath the back of the gearbox. To stop the motor from falling over, and to ensure it could only move in only plane, the cylinder head stay was a rose-jointed bracket. With only two mounts for the powertrain, the engine and gearbox needed to form a single unit so were bolted together, with an oil tank filling the area between them forming a sump beneath the gearbox. It wasn’t the prettiest of frames, especially with its box-section top tube, but it went largely unnoticed because it was all but invisible once everything was bolted to it. A last trick meant that the swing-arm was mounted on the back of the gearbox rather than the chassis, keeping the drive line accurately aligned, with the rubber mounts and head-steady ensuring the powertrain was always in line with the frame itself, and therefore the headstock.

The FXDL Low Rider was and remains a highly finished but minimal streetbike. More glitzy than a Super Glide, bit less radical than a Wide Glide, its 32-degree headstock, on the chassis it inherited from the Sturgis, endowed it with a laid back road presence.

If you compare the first FXDL with the first FXS, the styling cues are right there. It carried another two degrees of rake compared to the first model, which took its thirty-degrees from the neutral-steering Electra, but aside from that the front ends could have been the same. There was one less disk on the Dyna but Harley-Davidson has learned much about stopping and that single disk was markedly better than the twin units of the original. The fuel tank was sleeker on the new model, but it carried an updated version of the same dash. The seat was more pillow-tuft than vinyl, but was no higher – in fact it was more than quarter of an inch lower. The backrest that the FXS picked up on its way through the eighties manifested itself as little more than a padded bump-stop on its 90’s return. The motor was black and chrome compared to the silver stove-enamelled original, and it was a 1340 Evo rather than a 1200cc Shovelhead. But for all that, it was very definitely a Low Rider, a worthy successor and so it stayed for half a dozen years, and even then the major change was the replacement of the motor, to the Twin Cam 88, along with the rest of the rubber-mounted models.

The shape in fact remained unchanged until 2000 when the buckhorns were replaced by pullback risers and flat-track bars. The Low Rider had become so recognisable a shape that it no longer stood out as a custom, and the low-rider genre had moved on too, getting ever lower and flatter. It was time to bring it into line … well, as much as you can with a factory bike.

The backrest went, as did the ‘proper’ dualseat, which was replaced by a Badlander – a style unknown back in ’77 – and they lowered the front end while they were about it. The already compromised ground clearance was further reduced, giving it the ability to drag its front frame rails on the ground under duress, and the forward cruising pegs were lost. It put clear blue water between itself and the Super Glide and, leaving the Wide Glide to keep the soft chopper flag flying, the Low Rider sat flat on the floor. There could perhaps have been a better time to do it: the Twin Cam mods needed a bigger oil tank, and it couldn’t go anywhere other than further down between the frame rails, dropping out of the bottom by an inch, leaving it exposed and vulnerable but for a substantial frame-mounted steel ridge running alongside it. And but for a a paint job, and a few badges in prominent places, that is where we find it in Harley’s Anniversary year.

Walking towards the 2004 bike, it defies perspective. It seems to shrink as you approach, getting lower as you look down at it from your higher vantage point. It catches you out first time, but then so does swinging a leg across and being able to stand astride it without needing to physically touch the bike. As you settle way down into the saddle, remarking at just how far your legs can bend, and take the bars it really does feel like a machine half its size. That it doesn’t look disproportionate for a six-foot-plus rider is uncanny, because it feels as though it should. I got used to the size very quickly, and took delight in explaining to curious bystanders that it really was a litre-and-a-half’s worth of air-cooled long-stroke V-twin whenever they enquired … and sometimes when they didn’t. For me it is a riding position that comes together well, sitting deep within the area defined by the ’bars and the back of the saddle, I feel very much a part of the bike. It is significantly more relaxed than I remember the aggressive ’91 Sturgis being, although I do miss that bike’s cleaner line. It’s very much a personal thing, but flat bars are the right things to put on top of pullback risers: anything else introduces too many curves. I’d be tempted to fit a pair of drag bars on more pulled-back risers to give the purity of line but maintain the relaxed stance that the base of my spine appreciates these days.

Having learned the lessons of soft rear shocks last time out on a Low Rider, I made sure that this one was running at least half way up the preload ramps. I maybe over-compensated a little last time, having grounded the sump protector on a fuel station forecourt, so I switched it from the softest to the firmest setting at a stroke. That may have lead to Rich and Mandie’s discomfort on longer runs, but it gave it the ground clearance it needed – well, as much as a custom Softail – although it scarcely dipped at the back when two-up. This time, running at the mid-point setting caused no serious issues for me, once I’d found the cornering limits as dictated by the exhaust clips and sidestand ear – and two-up was no worse, surprisingly. To be honest, the stock shocks aren’t the best, by any stretch of the imagination, and better units would be an early item on my shopping list. The lack of any adjustment at the front end, especially with the reduced travel of the shorter fork unit, would guarantee a home for a matching set of fork springs, because once the back end was under control the front end would become more critical.

The seat caused few problems for the distances I was travelling, ranging from twenty to a hundred and twenty in one hit – and well within the fuel tank’s range. I was more surprised, however, by Marie’s reaction to the pillion seat. Not a lover of Badlanders – and that’s putting it lightly – she was wooed by the promise of a little more foam than the FXDX had previously offered, and announced her approval when we pulled over … well, close to approval. She actually said that it was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable but that’s a vast improvement on the torrent of abuse levelled at the seat fitted to the Super Glide Sport, and at me, now I come to think of it, after a similar distance. I’m not sure I would have fancied going to Barcelona on it, though, and I’m damn sure Marie would have offered to stay behind, or join me there if I’d suggested it.

At the risk of sounding like a scratched record, the Anniversary finish really suited the bike, and that’s speaking as one who was dismissive of the whole two-tone colour scheme when I first saw it in the brochures and inside dealers’ showrooms, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by every model I’ve seen wearing it, outside in the daylight.

The more I rode it the more I liked it, and the more I liked it the more I rode it. It was a joy after dragging the Electra Glide out, just for having more leverage and less weight when manhandling it in and out of the shed, but I go through streetbike envy every now and again. It has its limitations on the road but a lot of them are things you can get round, or get used to. Whether you should have to is a moot point, but that depends on your riding style more than anything else. I am reasonably demanding of my motorcycles, especially when it comes to cornering at reasonably high speeds: nothing silly, but I like to get the best out of the bike on good roads. Harley make the right bike for me in the Super Glide Sport, but there are aspects of the style which I’d prefer to live without. I like the style of the Low Rider but would like it to be a little better in the bends. Do I restyle a Super Glide Sport, or fix the Low Rider?

There is another alternative – there always is. Harley hasn’t built a Low Rider Sport for many years now, but it doesn’t mean you can’t. Starting off with a stock Super Glide because the plain finish engine is easier to work round, the only thing you’ll miss out on is the black and chrome engine because everything else you can reproduce or fake. If you like the laid-back rake, stick a pair of yokes with a four-degree rake in, but otherwise stick with the twenty-eight degrees, or split the difference with thirty and then get to work. In any event, the raked yokes will make the steering lighter as you’ll reduce the trail, but they’ll look right and will still be running a lively 28-degree rake. You’ll have fifteen-hundred quid to play with before you catch up with the cost of a genuine Low Rider, which I’d use for fork springs, decent shocks and a 190-section back tyre sitting in the stock swing-arm beneath a widened mudguard. I’d live without the tacho for the time being, concentrate on a decent simple paint job and look out for a second-hand DL seat to tie the lot together. To cap it all, I’d black the main engine block – mainly to lose the visible mass of the union between the engine and gearbox – and continue that up the barrels to the level of the cylinder head gasket, then clean the fins’ edges for purely cosmetic reasons. But that’s not what we’re looking at here.

I am being deliberately harsh, because it is the only major failing of the bike for my money, but then I have a specific requirement. Staff photographer, Derek, took the bike to a shoot in Manchester for the Terminator 3 film – which will upset Indian (IMCOA) whose bikes grace the screen in the new instalment – and Derek’s requirement is very different to mine. He returned with a beaming smile that suggested he was writing cheques in his mind, and he might just have found his perfect bike. He doesn’t feel the need it to whisk round roundabouts without slowing down as much as offer a lazy power delivery with old-fashioned mechanical feedback on a good-looking bike.

To be frank, running out of lean angle is something you get used to on just about any Harley big twin. The traditional outboard clutch means they’re wide at the back of the motor and short of raising the engine, and the centre of gravity, it’s going to touch down. The style of the customs dictates that they sit low, further limiting the ground clearance, but then you don’t buy a custom Dyna for its handling prowess: you buy a street Dyna, or a Buell. It’s not that it’s a dodgy frame because it isn’t, but its 32-degree rake will make it leisurely in bends with a slight understeer, and you’re not going to navigate any tight slalom courses on one without catching the occasional marker, so does it matter that you’re not going to get your titanium knee sliders sparking? You can either slow down, or uprate the shocks: simple really. Either course of action will work to some extent.

With the undercarriage-grinding tendencies countered by speed or increased sophistication, the Low Rider adds up to a seriously entertaining piece of hardware. I love the look of it, even with all its chrome, because it has a stance and a presence that sets it apart from anything else from the factory. I can actually live with the grinding noises too, but I would always wonder how much better the Low Rider Sport might be.

Specifications        

Engine:	Twin Cam 88 Air-cooled 45° V-twin.
Displacement:	1449cc (88ci)
Compression Ratio:	8.8:1
Bore & Stroke:	95.3 x 101.6mm
Torque:	106.0 @ 2900rpm
Fuel System:	Single Keihin Carburettor.
Exhaust System:	Staggered shorty duals
Oil Capacity:	2.8 litres
Fuel Capacity:	18.5 litres (includes reserve)
Primary Drive:	Double-row (duplex) chain
Final Drive:	Kevlar belt
Overall Length:	2330mm
Seat Height:	689mm
Ground clearance:	85mm
Rake/Trail:	32 / 129.4mm
Brakes: Front: Rear:	2 x 292 x 5.08mm with 4-pot caliper 292 x 5.84mm with 4-pot caliper
Wheels: Front: Rear:	T19 x 2.50 black/silver cast. T16 x 3.00 black/silver cast.
Tyres: Front: Rear:	100/90-19 57H 150/80 B16 71H
Wheelbase:	1620.0mm
Dry Weight:	300kg
Lean Angles:	34.4° left / 32.4° right
Instruments:	Electronic Speedo with odometer and re-settable trip meter, Tacho, Fuel Guage, Oil pressure light, engine diagnotic readout, security system light
Colour Options:	Two tone Sterling Silver & Vivid Black, Vivid Black, Gunmetal Pearl, Luxury Rich Red Pearl, White Pearl, Luxury Blue Pearl
Price:	£11,195 (R/W/B), £11,245 (Bk), £11,395 (G), £11,795 (S & Bk) Prices include usual otr inc. PDI, full tank of fuel, 12-months tax, first service, 12 months membership of Harley Owners Group (HOG) including their European roadside recovery
Test bike kindly supplied by:	Harley-Davidson UK. Oxford Business Park, 6000 Garsington Road, Oxford England OX4 2DQ Tel: 0870 850 1903 (UK)