We’ve already waxed lyrical online about entry-level bikes as a blank canvas, and we put the XL1200C against the Low Rider in issue one of the magazine, but this time we’re looking at the no frills options languishing in the bargain basement. These unassuming bikes are often passed over in favour of their attention-grabbing siblings, but they are surprisingly good-looking if you only take the time to look – and you’d be advised to look carefully for while they might be the cheapest of their ranges, they are a long way from being compromised.

The XLH883 Sportster is a Harley salesman’s dream: price competitive with Japanese "rivals" it brings people into the dealers secure in the knowledge that they can afford a slice of Americana for no more than the cost of a more mainstream motorcycle, and never more so than now, with the Anniversary offer on, as they clear the decks for the replacement models. In reality it has no rivals because, for better or worse, no-one else builds anything like it.

Meanwhile, the FXD Dyna Super Glide sits at the bottom of the big twin range. You might question its price described as a bargain, being almost twice that of the cheapest XLH, but it is nearly twice as big in terms of engine capacity, and the resale value of big twins is legendary. It too has a style that’s been ignored by the Japanese, harking back to the original Super Glides – okay, the ones after the boat-tail seat – but it looks altogether more modern than you’d expect.

Both bikes stood at the back of the queue when the accessories and special finishes were handed out, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You won’t find a tacho, second disk, two-tone paint option or, in the case of the Sportster, a pillion seat at this end of the price range, but there’s no shortage of models that add all that and more. What you can easily do, however, is to add any of those items in any combination you like to produce your very own style, depending on whether you’ve got more of a thing for speed or image – or a combination of both.

Take the engine, for example. Plain silver and polished aluminium in both examples. Simplicity itself, but it doesn’t appeal to everyone. In big twin guise it saves $1,000 in the US – at least it does if you compare the prices of engines purchased on their own. If you don’t like it, no problem: paint it. It’s significantly easier to paint an engine than to try and remove the wrinkle black that you don’t really want, and you’d need to be keen to attempt to dechrome a black and chromed motor. Personally, I like the plain finish. I know the lacquer will come off eventually, but when it does it will look appreciably better than a Super Glide Sport of a similar age and mileage. I’d be tempted to black the barrels to allude to older motors’ use of cast iron in that role, but it wouldn’t be a high priority.

And it’s more than just the status of the finish. Black things look smaller than silver things, as anyone who’s ever faced the dreaded "does my bum look big in this" question can testify. It’s a brave girl who wears silver Spandex aware of its distorting capabilities, but it’s a braver bloke who’ll answer the question honestly.

In arses, as in engines, it is a subjective thing: I’m a black Lycra man, myself, but in the case of a Sportster – it’s gotta be Spandex. What do you mean, not PC? I’m reliably informed that the appreciation of a shapely derriere is not an exclusively male pastime. Tight, integrated and sophisticated? Black and chrome. Solid, raw and brutal? Bare metal. You don’t see it as obviously in a Dyna chassis, because the fuel tank hides the top of the motor, but the Sportster shamelessly flaunts itself for all to see. The silver engine overpowers anything except white sheet metal in the battle for attention, and the overall effect is of a solid, chunky, hot rod of a bike.

Paint it black, and stick a pair of rabbit-ear pullbacks on it and it’ll turn into a spindly cruiser before your very eyes, but the flatter bars, no-more-than-necessary solo saddle and minimal chrome do a good job of disguising the underpowered engine. I was going to say underdeveloped then for a second but that isn’t actually the case because, in its favour, all the development work has been done to turn the recipient of kicked sand into a rippling Atlas.

All you’ve got to do to realise that potential is work out what you want your Sportster to deliver and get your spanners and chequebook out.

The most common thing to do to an 883 to make it work is to convert it to a 1200. The kit is available through Harley’s own P&A catalogue, the crank is known to handle the power and the 20% increase in torque at lower revs is too tempting for many, but it doesn’t have to be like that. If you want the bottom end stomp that comes free with everything else that wears a Harley badge and has an air-cooled motor, there ain’t no substitute for cubes. If you want a sportster with a small "s", you can get more power from its 883cc if you’re prepared to work at it. Get it breathing properly, cam it and stick an ignition module on it – and even port it once it’s outside the warranty period – and you’ll have something that will be more engaging than when in its stock incarnation, vibrate less, and drink marginally less fuel than the 1200. If you want to get ambitious and destroke it, let me know because I’d love to see how well that would work.
In either case you need to be aware that you’ll then have to trust in the goodwill of your dealer to honour the original warranty over the performance bits’ three month warranty. Be aware that your Harley dealer is your friend and wants you to come back again, so they’re unlikely to be too harsh, and Harley’s UK representatives have a vested interest in making sure you are happy too … just don’t take the mickey, because they’ll have already seen every scam going.

The Motor Company actually still make the XLH1200 but we don’t get them over here. I wouldn’t lose much sleep over that because they are equipped with dual-seats and bunny bars and look like spindly cruisers. Why don’t we get them? Because we worked out long ago that an 883 plus the 1200 conversion is appreciably cheaper than a XLH1200. By the time you’ve done the conversion, you’ve got an XLH 1200 with small valves and pistons shaped to accommodate the smaller combustion chamber – assuming you retain the stock heads. You could go the whole hog and slap a pair of 1200 heads on too, but if you’re going that far you might want to look at Buell barrels, pistons and Thunderstorm heads.

But that presupposes that everyone who buys a Sportster with a big "S" wants a sportster with a little "s" and that isn’t the case, as a lot of people keep telling me. If you want a compact, traffic-beating bike with respectable fuel economy and range, and are not in a desperate hurry to get anywhere fast, it is actually a decent bike. I have no doubt that a lot of what follows is tempered by a deliberate attempt to be kind to a low mileage motor, more than an attempt to wring what power I could from the poor, strangled thing. And if you think you can sense my antipathy towards the humble 883 weakening here: you’d be right. The more time I spend on 883s the better I understand them, now that I’ve got over the travesty of the tank’s text. That said, I’ve deliberately not ridden my Buell since picking the Sportster up or dropping it back, and daren’t until I finish writing this.

Away from the comparison with a rubber-mounted, tuned version of this motor’s bigger brother, the 883 stands up fairly well, and the only thing I really missed was the bottom end torque. It manifests itself in a realisation that you’ve not got enough revs with the clutch fully home to pull away smoothly, but is cured with a quick handful of clutch, a blip of the right hand and feeding the clutch out more gently. It is never more obvious than when following or being followed by a big twin, as you can hear the bigger motor generate power from nothing, but does that make it a good reason to upgrade? No, it makes it a good reason to learn to ride it like the bike it is.

It’s not that the power isn’t there, it’s that it is a different kind of power. Yes, it is down on torque compared to a big twin, or a 1200, but many people have never had that sort of torque to play with, and judging by the number of grinning, former-Sportbike owners I recognise as they pilot their newly acquired 883s round the home town we share, I’d say it represents a step up to them in those terms.

In terms of economy, I’d never got much more than a hundred miles on any 1200 Sportster before switching to reserve (... err, see next issue’s test on the XL1200S, where I eat those words), while I was clearing a hundred and thirty miles before realising it on the 883. In terms of speed, it will easily cruise at the legal limit with plenty in reserve, more in deference to the age of the motor than the law of the land, although the latter is becoming an increasingly prominent issue. At legal speeds, on most roads, the Sportster was everything it needed to be. It took any bend with confidence; it stopped quite quickly enough for the OEM tyres, and it made a nice noise while rambling about. It could have been travelling more quickly, would have stopped better with a second disk, and a Stage 1 would have shared the nice noise with more people over a wider area, but it was still involving to ride, entertaining to throw about and I even got used to the seat foam to the extent that I could ride it for half a day at a time without walking like John Wayne afterwards.

Returning to the Super Glide, the difference in scale is marked. The broader tank, lower saddle and wider engine between your ankles reminds you that Harley-Davidson make two distinctly different motorcycles, and this is the other one. The feeling of sitting on top of something is replaced by a comforting sense of being much more a part of the bike. The scale of the bike was visually disguised by the Gunmetal Pearl paint of the Anniversary scheme but it didn’t feel small, which shouldn’t come as a major surprise. The Dyna chassis is, after all, based on the lines of the 4-speed/Duoglide chassis that was used for every big twin between 1958 and 1979 and outlived the Panhead and Shovelhead engines, finally ceasing production in 1986. For all its heritage, it plays second fiddle to the Softail in the classic stakes, and nowadays – certainly in the Super Glide – you could almost call it inoffensive, it is so anonymous, but it continues to live in my affections as the Harley for the self-effacing rider.

Half-expecting compromises, the comfort of the broad, comfortable and practical saddle is a pleasant surprise, but then you remember that it is only cheap compared to its siblings: for a little under £10k it should be good. I happen to think that, with the rest of the bike, it is.

I’d like adjustable suspension, but I’m happy with the compromise on the basis that I’ve got the simple engine finish that I prefer; I’d like a second disk, but I can ride within the single 4-pot brake’s limitation. Would I like a rev counter? If I had one, I’d ride it more like an FXDX, but if I wanted a DX I’d be better off buying one of them because the price differential is nothing compared to the cost of adding the additional hardware to the cooking model.

The fact that the humble, unassuming Super Glide has the same engine in the same state of tune as its sportier sibling means you can give it a handful without being too concerned about it running out of breath, and its common frame means it won’t get out of shape either, but you will have your enthusiasm tempered by a comparative lack of ground clearance – compared to the taller Sport with its dial-in damping, and certainly compared to the XLH883.

It’s all very confidence-inspiring until you inevitably hit terra-firma with either the sidestand’s ear, or the exhaust’s heat-shield » clips, but it isn’t especially unsettling the second time you do it. That could signal the need to trade up, but to do so would be accept the Sport’s higher seat, brought about by its increased ground clearance. As it is, the FXD represents an acceptable compromise between the high-riding Sport and the ground-hugging Low Rider and I’d be tempted to control the ride better with a pair of decent shocks at the back, with matching springs in the forks.

For all its sporting potential though, I found myself pootling on the FXD in a way that I haven’t pootled for a long, long time. Unhurried, open road cruising without the impression that the bike wanted to go faster, even though it was more than capable, and – for the first time in a long while – I was happy to let the bike set the pace, despite the pressures of deadlines. In fact I’m not sure I was even going quickly enough to pootle, I was more likely bimbling, and was astonished to find that I was doing fifty on a dual carriageway. It wasn’t that I thought I was going faster, I didn’t really think about what speed I was doing at all – which usually equates to ten miles an hour over, rather than twenty under the speed limit – and I can put it down to one of two things: either the rumours about being the wrong side of forty are true and I’ve just slowed down, or else the Super Glide has a flexibility about it that I’d not noticed before.

I’m delighted to say that a wild weekend out on my Buell has scuppered the former theory – yes, now I’ve finished writing-up the Sportster I’ve let myself back on the Cyclone – so flexibility it is.

The flexibility of the Dyna’s big twin motor distinguishes it from the Sportster from the moment you thumb the starter. It pulls from nothing, masking the harshness of its vibration without removing its feedback and launching you forwards in quite a different way. Drop the clutch too quickly and you’ll still stall it, but you’d need to be clumsy to do that too often. If you pull away with too few revs, you just open twist the throttle and it picks up speed without transmission snatch or mechanical complaint. You know you’re on a big twin when you instinctively shift up as soon as your feet are up on the footrests, with the speedo just about registering double figures: if you had a tacho, you’d see you were registering scarcely more than a tickover. You can hold it in the gears for longer, if you prefer, which will reward you with a smoothing out of the vibes, signifying that motor has cleared three thousand revs. Short-shifting, you can be in top gear before you leave the suburbs and let the lazy motor waft you along, enjoying an almost sensual massage from the damped vibrations; holding it longer in lower gears gives greater opportunity to dive into the gaps in traffic, sitting in the thick of the long-stroke’s torque curve. Whichever way you prefer, the Super Glide handles it with ease: it’ll even give a good account of itself against significantly faster hardware in the traffic light derby if you use that torque properly, and the single-gear roll-on power of a big twin is something that everybody should experience at least once in their life.

But, I hear you say, isn’t the same true of the Softail Standard, 1200 Sporty or the Road King?

No, not really. The smooth-running 88B motor bolted firmly to the Softail’s frame has none of the character of the rubber-bushed Dyna; the 1200 Sportster feels more highly-strung and is altogether harsher; and the Road King is significantly bigger and heavier. Don’t get me wrong, each is a good bike in its own right, and for its intended role, but the only thing that goes like a Dyna is another Dyna – or perhaps an FXR – and in Dyna terms it’s only really got the Sport and T-Sport as rivals because you can separate them from the Low Rider and Wide Glide in an instant, courtesy of their sharper steering heads.

We’ve covered steering geometry in a previous tech, but this is the theory in practice. Tighter than even the Sportster, the twenty-eight degrees of all Dyna Super Glides endows them with quick steering beyond all expectations, but never at the expense of good manners on the open road. The FXD is excellent in town and feels lighter than its 300kg would suggest, aided undoubtedly by a forward riding position and a pair of wide flat-track bars, which give loads of leverage and enable you to throw it around like something half its weight. The 32-degree Dynas are ponderous by comparison. Never happier than when on the open road, they are light and slim enough to take on towns and cities but in terms of agility will never keep pace with a Super Glide in threading through the stationary motorised maze of our traffic-clogged towns. The Sportster – any Sportster – is often held up as the quintessential city bike but don’t discount the Super Glide for the role. That comes down to a choice between riding a wave of effortless torque on the big twin, or blatting between traffic lights on the more spirited Sportster. Both have their attractions.

Surprisingly, in view of the different style and stance of these budget offerings, you can spend an unproductive hour spotting the common parts adorning the two to the extent that you come away thinking they are a frame and engine apart and just about everything else is shared, but we’ve long since realised that any Harley is much more than the sum of its parts, however closely related those parts are. Still, you’ve got to question just how much more it costs to produce a big twin motor compared to a Sportster’s mill because wheels, forks, shocks, instruments, switches and the majority of the sheet metal is, if not identical, then close enough to cost the same to produce. Indeed, if you stumped up for an 883, sold the original engine and frame as brand new and unused, and bought a big twin motor and a custom frame, you could potentially save a fortune. In that case you could build an even closer facsimile of the 4-speeds of old, or even an FXR, or just about anything you wanted realistically. You’ve saved £4k before you’ve sold the motor and chassis, and you don’t need many cycle parts because you’ve still got those from the XL. A new genuine motor and gearbox is going to cost you most of that so it comes down to how big the market for legitimate Sportster engines and frames is – and it’s worth knowing that while Harley sell big twins engines and gearboxes, and even Evo lumps, they don’t list Sportster motors in the P&A catalogue or on-line.

History will soon be able to judge how successful the last of the Sportsters was, and the pricing of its rubber-mounted replacement will determine how much more competition the FXD will face from it’s new baby brother. Certainly the rubber-mounted motor will be a welcome addition to the XL, and will close the gap between them, and in 2004 this comparison will be a very different contest. For now though, the Big Twin takes the chequered flag in spite of its price, but even that isn’t really as it seems because to give the Sportster the same flexibility would cost money, closing the gap and making the FXD more attractive with every cheque written on the XL.

So how about starting on a Jap and trading up later? Sure, you can spend significantly less on a very competent Japanese motorcycle – and we’re not in the business of rubbishing them because they are very good at what they do, if that’s what you want – but to do so will cost you money as soon as you bolt a number plate to the back: knock a grand off straight away, or as much as twice that if you paid the full list price because you really should have shopped around. Then when the model changes knock at least another three figure sum off it, because it’s last year’s shape. Change it in any way and you might as well start flushing tenners down the toilet because you won’t see them again. Okay, you could keep it, but it will lose its appeal over time because they do: they’re designed to. The next one, or the one after that will be so much faster, lighter, stylistically sharper, and ‘better’ – and probably long before you’ve found the limits of the one you’ve got – but that also makes yours less attractive on the secondhand market. Spending less can cost you more in the short, medium and long term. What’s expensive now?

You still can’t buy a four year old TC88 FXD for significantly less than a new one and even the older Evos from ’95-on are holding their value because the different nature of the longer stroke motor is more appealing to a section of the market. If you want to see the bigger picture, an FXR Super Glide cost £8,319 in 1993 and a good one will command most of that today, and in another ten years will fetch more, and the same is largely true of an XLH883 which would have set you back £4,459 in 1993 - and hasn’t substantially changed since. Time will tell how this generation holds its value in the face of its successor, but it’s a strange world and not everyone will welcome the 2004 XL, just as they didn’t universally applaud the Twin Cam, and there will be those for who the 100th Anniversary Sportster represents the pinnacle of its development.

Second Opinion:
Words: Rich

XLH 883 Sportster

Bear with me everyone please, this could be a life changing moment. Right, settle down and close your eyes and imagine for just one minute that Harley-Davidson Motor Co. actually only make one model. Try to temporarily forget about the sleek silver Emperor Ming rocketships, huge tourers, tasty customs and handsome all-rounders they actually do offer and just pretend for a bit, for me, that the XLH 883 Sportster is, and always has been, their entire model line up.
Now open your eyes and take another look …

Blimey O’Reilly! Suddenly the ‘humble’ 2003 XLH 883 Sportster doesn’t look quite so humble. It looks like a well proportioned, attractive and well-engineered proper bike with a bloody huge V-twin engine stuck in the middle of it.

And that’s just for starters.
Because furthermore, a wealth of potential literally oozes from it, the customiser in us all gags to get at it, dying to make it a real hog. The XLH 883 could so easily be shorter, longer, higher, lower, faster, be bored out to 1200cc and beyond, made more comfortable, made meaner, hard tailed, given a bigger tank, wider ’bars, a smaller tank, chopped, streetfightered – well, whatever, I’m hoping you get my drift.
And you can buy a brand new one, complete with the 100th Anniversary gubbins, for the paltry sum of £5,145.00.

… doesn’t that change your perception of the bog stock ‘ordinary’ 883 just a bit?

Alright, mind games over, just what can a potential owner expect from the XLH 883? My first look at this particular machine was very favourable, the finish was, frankly, second to none: no obvious cost cutting for this supposed bargain basement bike. True, there wasn’t much chrome, but I didn’t shed any tears, I personally prefer polished metal or paint on a motorcycle anyway. At this stage I must point out that my admiration had nothing at all to do with the fact that this XLH’s colour was very much like the plum colour on my own dear departed 4-Speed XLH 883 1990 Sporty. The Rich Red paint job over tank and mudguards really did the machine a lot of favours – it lent it a larger presence than many of its kin. Personally, again, I was relieved that of the four base colour options in this 100 Anniversary year, this was the one without the damnable wobbly stripe, although the Vivid Black, that does, is available at the same price and the similarly afflicted Gunmetal Pearl is a modest £100 more expensive. However this 883 did have a few Anniversary embellishments, and carried a few 2003 improvements. The 2003 XLH benefits, as does the FXD Super Glide, from the new teardrop mirrors and bullet style indicators, which would grace any custom project. Both items are a nice piece of ‘added value’ and are unlikely to be on the top of the ‘immediate replacement’ list. Overall, the XLH hangs together very well, the parts are well made and there is little on the machine that does immediately beg to be replaced upon ownership, apart perhaps from the single seat – but even that isn’t as ugly as it used to appear. Anniversary-wise, the engine bears a discrete emblem on the left hand side below the front pot, another attractive plaque is mounted centrally near the handlebars and the petrol tank sports the H-D anniversary logo each side. That the emblem was merely a sticker and not the full cloisonné badge fitted to everything else except the red, white and blue models for 2003, and befits its status as being significantly cheaper than the rest of the Harley-Davidson range. Below the petrol tank, was the coup de grace, the polished alloy and silver V-twin engine, which really dominated the entire machine.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the Sportsters as the babies of the Harley-Davidson’s range but one look at the XLH’s 883cc lump reminds you just how big the engines on these bikes actually are.

But well underpowered yeah? Well, yes and no, to be completely predictable and, like, totally AmV.
Will it stuff an FXD Super Glide?

No.

That said, we are all well aware of the massive potential locked away inside the engine of even a plain old XLH 883, and so it’s easy to dismiss the stock power it does offer as fairly derisory. In fact, even with a hefty lump like me aboard, the stock XLH does pull pretty impressively, its low horsepower compensated by a well-balanced gob of immediate torque. Don’t get me wrong, you are not going to see 100mph out of it, easily reached on a bog stock FXD Super Glide, but at legal speeds the bike is not lacking. Whether it’s around town or out in the country the XLH 883 is perfectly adequate for ordinary or reasonably spirited riding – ie. normal, 95 percent of the time, enjoyable motorcycling.

Yes, yes, yes by all means start to unleash the potential of an 883 if you want to – but YOU DON’T HAVE TO! It’s not a requirement of ownership to turn your well-behaved, enjoyable and attractive Harley into an ill-mannered, unridable bastard. Let’s not beat around the bush here, most bikers do not ride like maniacs. Most riders, whether or not they’re into cruising motorcycles – and that does include matey-boy up the road with his smooth plastic, rocket propelled dildo – ride safely and within their own limits. Most riders enjoy the ride, the wind up the nose, the scenery and that, and don’t particularly attract the attention of either camera or cop cruiser. And if that is the way said matey-boy up the road does ride, then persuade him to off-load his highly-strung, bum-numbing, wrist-breaking, impractical super sports – and like it not, at normal road speeds that is what they are – and point him, perhaps somewhat reluctantly on his part, at a fairly stock, comfortable, economical, big, secure and pretty damn handsome XLH 883. It could be just the bike he’s secretly been looking for. Y’know, just a thought.

That same mate might well interject that ‘The brakes are terrible on Harley’s, everybody knows that.’ Well they’re not on the Sportster XLH 883, and are just as dependable on any other modern Harley. It’s old news, stock Harley brakes were pretty dire fifteen years ago but many things have changed for the better since then. Same goes with ‘Things fall off’ and ‘Unreliable’, they don’t and it isn’t. If you’re looking for a new bike that does shed parts and is unreliable, try a Duke or Guzzi.

… watch his face go purple on that one!

The XLH is a nimble motorcycle, great for tackling town traffic, it puts many other bikes, big and small, to shame: narrow, quite short with plenty of handlebar lock and good brakes it’s able to dodge and weave as well as most scooters. But the Sportster is big and powerful enough to squirt forward out of trouble impressively with a small twist of the throttle. The XLH is also enjoyable where the roads are clearer out of town. It will get the pegs down – eventually, there’s quite a bit of lean angle on the stock XLH – and it certainly feels planted enough doing it. I like the fat front tyre on the 19-inch laced wheel sported by the XLH. Custom Sportsters are graced by a skinny 21-incher, which some people like and others don’t, but I think the chunkier front suits the XLH down to the ground, as it does indeed on the Sportster-style front end of the FXD Super Glide: it looks more purposeful – and I definitely appreciate the additional square inch or two of rubber to road surface.

If I owned the machine, I’d immediately change the tyres – though they do appear to be improving – and fit wider bars, such as the 883R is blessed with. That would turn the machine into a real scratcher with very little outlay and make its city manners even better. In short, the 883 would make a fine, interesting and involving commuter, especially when considering its frugal fuel consumption, much better by miles, than its larger capacity cousins.

Once out of the city, though, the faster the roads, the more the machine begins to show its limitation in power: it would be a braver rider than I that would attempt to overtake a speeding articulated truck on a 70mph bendy two lane blacktop – on a stock 883 at least. I was a little harsh earlier, the XLH will take an awful lot of performance modifications before it would become un-rideable. Certainly the Stage One modifications are cheap enough, simple enough and, without changing the character of the machine, really do make a massive difference to its performance, and … er, noise. Choose the right silencers and you’ll get power, performance and a deep enough rumble to please you without upsetting either neighbours or the local constabulary. I’d personally wait ’til my 883 was well run-in before I started any tweaking though.
Many riders of other marques seem to consider their machines to be disposable items: break them and throw them away. But even this most modest Harley seems has an aura about it that influences the rider to treat it with respect, a respect that is repaid four-fold as the machine matures into a sweet running, loose and responsive darling of a bike.

After the 883 Stage One, any number of custom and performance options are open to the owner, choose the ones that best enhance your style of riding and will allow the machine to better do the work you ask of it. You will not have to make the decisions alone, as the wealth of freely given knowledge and advice in shops and pubs and clubs is one of the added extra joys of Harley ownership.

In the truest definition of the phrase, the XLH 883 Harley-Davidson Sportster is ‘entry level’: they’re light enough and a cinch to ride, and for not so much money you can own one, but don’t be fooled for one minute that it is any less of a Harley because of it. In continuous production for nearly fifty years, stripped down to the absolute essentials, primal and waiting for the owner’s personality to be stamped upon it, it could be argued that the XLH is the Harley-est of them all.

At the time of writing Harley are currently doing an absolutely demon deal on a new 100th Anniversary XLH 883 – it’s got an on the road price of £5,145, which is pretty great, but if you prefer they’re doing £100 down, ride off into the sunset and £100 a month for the next four years, and a final payment of £2,103!FXD Super Glide

Whereas the ‘entry level’ moniker sits quite happily on the head of the XLH883, for a variety of good reasons, I don’t feel it is quite so apt when used to describe an FXD Super Glide. A new 883 Sportster’s £5,145 is quite reasonable, or to put that in perspective, only £200 or so less than the practical and comfy, seriously stonking Yamaha XJR 1300 muscle bike! For those in close orbit around planet Harley, £9,695 for a Super Glide may well seem like a bargain nobody can afford to miss … uh, HELLO? The only £10,000 ‘entry levels’ we’ve got up here in Lancashire are houses! The only thing that makes the Super Glide’s price look reasonable is the fact that the other big twin 88s in the range are even more expensive, a steep rise from the Super Glide – going from, ‘Mmm, quite a bit of money that’ to, frankly, bloody ridiculous.
Perhaps I’m being a little unfair, I’ll give it some thought. No, no I’m not actually being unfair at all. I know loads of bikers around here who would love to own a brand new big twin, and there is absolutely no way they can afford one – even a Super Glide – and calling nearly £10,000 ‘entry level’ is, from their point of view, really taking the mickey.

However, okay, rant over, if you’re after paying as little money as possible for a brand new Twin Cam then the Super Glide is the obvious bike for you. Harley-Davidson themselves see the Super Glide a perfect platform to start a custom project moving forwards but leaving ‘entry level’ and ‘blank canvas’ descriptions to one side for the moment, what do you actually get for your money?

Personally speaking, one of my absolute favourite Dynas. The reasons are fairly simple and start – as is usual for a visually led brain like mine – with the looks. The FXD Super Glide is perhaps the second most unpretentious bike in Harley’s line up or arguably, holds joint first with the XLH 883. Both are blessed with simple, honest, uncluttered lines, both beg to be altered at some point but are handsome enough to give an owner that visual buzz every time they look at them even as they are.

The Super Glide’s comparisons with the Sportster don’t end there either. When I’d first parked it outside the pub, my mate Krink wandered out for a look – ‘Oh, it’s like a big Sportster!’ he remarked and taking another look at it myself thought, ‘Yeah, I can see that’. Intellectually, I knew that the Super Glide historically does share the Sportster’s front end, but from Krink’s point of view I think it was as much the FXD’s simplicity of line and restrained design as the shared front end. I won’t ask him to confirm that though, because he’ll just snort, call me a smarty arse, pretentious tosser and order another Newkie.
So is it worth paying over £5,000 more than the XLH for ‘a big Sportster’? The answer lies in asking what you’ll be expecting your bike to be able to do and making your decision then. For whereas the XLH out of the box is a tasty runabout with bags of potential, a stock FXD Super Glide is a serious piece of kit, big enough, comfortable enough and fast enough to do just about anything you ask of it … with bags of potential to boot.

Cards on the table, the stock Twin Cam engine will, excuse my French, piss all over the stock 883. As a stock powerplant the 88 is faster both at the top end and under acceleration with bags more mid-range stomp and, benefiting from being a newer design, it’s slicker and more user-friendly. Furthermore, the Sportster will have to see quite a lot of potentially expensive performance work to get close. And once the Super Glide’s Twin Cam has been Stage One’d the chase starts all over again.

But it’s not just out and out performance where the differences between the FXD and XLH are made plain. On the road the Super Glide feels a much superior motorcycle in many respects. The Super Glide is a supremely comfortable bike; the capacious seat, for both rider and pillion means that the machine can be ridden full to empty without getting numbumitis – and has the added advantage of not looking too bad at all when nobody’s sat on it. Though the rider’s foot pegs are not set forward, but more underneath the rider, does not mean than the bike is less comfortable – far from it. ‘Forwards’ can sometimes ‘lock’ the rider into a position whereas with pegs underneath some of the rider’s weight is taken by the feet. With the width of the Super Glide too, this ‘armchair’ seating position means that many, many miles can be covered before the onset of any fatigue – not just more pleasant, but potentially safer too.

The wide handlebars help as well. Not only do they look pretty spiff’ but they’re set right for comfortable cruising and are wide enough for easy low speed manoeuvrability. While it is received wisdom that narrow ’bars are best for going fast, with the Super Glide wound up you find that the counter-steer is so much easier, the extra leverage meaning you’re not working anything like as hard to sweep the machine through the bends. Yeah, narrow handlebars are perfect if you’re riding balls-out, bum in the air on a stiffly set up sports machine or do most of your miles in straight lines and don’t need the wind buffeting – like American-style lowriders with drag ’bars. But on the whole, wider handlebars, for most riding conditions, are my preferred choice – and the Super Glide’s set are particularly suitable.

Two aspects of the FXD, like any other Dyna indeed, will really surprise any potential owner unused to Harley-Davidsons. That’s handling and vibration. ‘Oh no,’ says barstool Billy, ‘I know all about that, Harleys don’t handle and vibrate like a steel ball rolling across corrugated iron’. He’s wrong, 180 degrees wrong: the contrary is the truth. The FXD does and doesn’t!

For sure the FXD is a very large and heavy motorcycle, making the Sportster look quite petite in direct comparison, but that does not mean that you need to be a six foot plus gorilla to ride one. Like any other Big Twin, the massive weight is mainly below the wheel spindles, actually below the bike’s centre of gravity. Triffic science, but in reality this means that the Dyna can easily be tilted off of its stand onto its wheels by just about anybody. It also means that the FXD has superb road manners. Underway, even very slowly underway, the machine is incredibly stable and sure-footed, those wide bars allowing easy and delicate changes of direction. So while you may at first think that the FXD is purely a highway cruiser, and therefore totally unsuitable for town life, you would be very wrong.

Out of town, even being ridden hard, the FXD Super Glide holds a line surprisingly well, will easily grind out various appendages on either side and, despite the feeble-looking single front disk, brake surprisingly effectively too. The Dyna’s twin shocks at the rear may be old-fashioned, as are the Right Way Up front forks, but that technology has worked pretty well for at least 50 years and it would be a fool who’d dismiss it out of hand, on looks alone. Try it, you will like it, guaranteed.

But, as mentioned before, another treat in store and another reason why a new owner may well end up riding the FXD a lot harder than they had originally anticipated is the vibration – or rather, the lack of it. Unlike the Sportster, the FXD’s 1450cc air cooled V-twin is mounted on rubber mounts in the Dyna family’s frame, so while that ‘unbalanced’ big vee does vibrate a bit – as it should – hardy a tremor is transmitted to the rider. The vibes are there, start the motor up from cold on full choke, let it warm and push the choke half back in, and the low frequency, low rev vibes are only too obvious, but blip the throttle and the vibes virtually disappear. While under town conditions you are always aware that there is a bloody big engine powering the beast between your knees, it is perfectly tolerable – and if anything, desirable – but using only enough revs to pull away there is only a pleasant murmur. Wind the FXD up, though, on A-roads, or sweep onto a motorway, and its biggest surprise is revealed. Unlike the XLH Sportster, which buzzes unpleasantly at anything over eighty mph, the FXD actually gets smoother and smoother. The faster you go, the more revs you use, the silkier it becomes. You soon realise that Super Glide is an appropriate name as you sweep effortlessly along a motorway like you’re on a magic carpet. You see many Dynas with aftermarket screens and saddlebags: once you’ve ridden one, and realised how comfortable they are and how smooth they are at speed you can understand the logic.

The FXD makes a great compromise. It can tour, pose or be thrown about with abandon. It is also, as Harley has suggested, a superb platform to start an 88 custom project, especially if your ideas are leaning more towards a performance Harley custom rather than a lowriding chop. If it has to be a new 88, especially if you know damn well you are going to start altering the machine, then the FXD Super Glide is well worth a good long look before you start digging any deeper into your pockets.

But note I said ‘If it has to be a new 88 …’ the FXD is a fine bike for sure, but don’t forget you can purchase two XLH 883s for another £600.