1995 Harley-Davidson Bad Boy

1995 HARLEY-DAVIDSON BAD BOY

WELCOME BACK THE BOBJOB

CYCLE WORLD TEST

WHEN HARLEY FIRST INTRODUCED THE Softail Springer, George Bush had yet to be elected president, Saddam Hussein was just another desert dictator, and-to the relief of map makers everywhere-the Soviet Union was still a single country. Six years later, the world has changed almost unimaginably, and Harley has a new Softail Springer: The FXSTSB Bad Boy.

No, Harley isn’t kidding-that’s really the name of its latest Softail. So what makes it bad? Ninety years of Harley heritage, and a look that harks back to the simplicity of 1940s bobjob customs. Noting some discontent among its hard-core audience about “yupped-out garbage wagons,” Harley has eschewed the excessive glitter of some more recent models to give the Bad Boy a cleaner, darker style. Black paint covers most of the springer front end, the rear fender stays and much else that was previously chrome. Cloisonné fuel-tank emblems, Santa-Fe-style seat conchos and a bullet headlight remind of decades past. All in all, the Bad Boy is a lower, leaner, tougher-looking machine than its predecessor.

That’s despite a shortage of visible mechanical changes, You have to look hard to see any deeper-than-paint differenees between this bike and the first Softail Springer. Yes, the scat and headlight are obvious. But did you pick up on the four-bar linkage that allows the front fender to hug the skinny 21-inch tire more tightly? Or the half-inch of extra rear-wheel travel? if so, count yourself among The Faithful.

You have to be one of the long-term Faithful to notice something else: More than a decade of small, incremental improvements on Harley's part to engines and components have resulted in big changes in character and refinement. Thumb the starter button, and the Bad Boy’s Big Twin up instantly on a warm summer morning, with no choke, the engine quickly settling into its classic lope. Full in the clutch, and you find the effort reasonable, the actii precise-not so a decade ago. A push on the shift lever clic rather than clunks you into first, likely a result of the dragfree clutch and-perhaps-unspoken improvements made in the transmission to cut mechanical noise. The Bad Boy pulls smoothly, strongly, evenly from low speeds, and will accelerate uphill in top gear from 35-mph without driveline snatch. Under the same conditions, a pre-Keihin-CV-carbed, pre-belt-drive Softail would be hammering its chain into early retirement.

This year, the addition of semi-floating rotors and lowexpansion brake lines, along with the rounded-edge hand levers added two years ago, mean even motojoumalists have less reason to criticize the Harley front brake. It’s still on the wooden side, and still requires a strong squeeze to stop hard, but it’s so much better than its predecessors.

But some things never change, and that includes the Bad Boy’s target rider. If the pilots of sportbikes are after the adrenalin rush and that addictively intense concentration that comes with speed, the rider of a Bad Boy seeks mellower pleasures. Consequently, the Bad Boy and sportbikes don’t even speak the same performance language. Acceleration? The Bad Boy-all 1340cc of it-takes 14.36 seconds to cover a quarter-mile. Braking? 130 feet from 60 mph is the best the skinny front tire will allow. Top Speed? You shouldn’t even ask.

Nothing says more about what kind of performance is important to the Bad Boy’s audience than the rigidly mounted engine. Okay, the Bad Boy is perhaps the smoothest Softail yet-sort of like describing O. J. Simpson as the most personable of knife-murder suspects. At idle, no problem: The Big Twin lopes, but the rest of the bike is as placid as a pond at sunrise. Even at 35 to 50 mph in top gear, the Bad Boy shakes and rumbles with such low frequency and amplitude that the experience is as lulling and natural as listening to the rhythm of the surf as you drift toward sleep. Only at 55 to 60 do the first annoying vibes afflict the hand grips. The vibration stays tolerable to almost 75 mph, but that’s where it reaches full paint-shaker class, with bars, pegs and seat all buzzing. Go faster yet, and you almost expect the Bad Boy to start jettisoning parts the way a dog shakes off fleas. Even so, if the Bad Boy were your only bike, you could adapt.

It’s in that 70-mph-and-under range of real-world riding where the Bad Boy shines. The heavy flywheels, the smooth and torque-rich power delivery, the syncopated exhaust note, all deliver a sensually rich and entertaining motorcycle experience, even if you’re just putting around town. The Bad Boy might not rip through the quarter-mile, but it rolls on from low speed strongly and convincingly. Cruising at 50 mph on a scenic two-lane, you can hardly imagine another motorcycle that would be more rewarding. That’s because on most other motorcycles the experience would be fundamentally different; it would be about going faster, about testing yourself or the motorcycle. On the Bad Boy, you’re just there, in the cool air, watching the world go by, feeling your Harley rumble under you.

The riding position contributes to that “just being there” feeling. You sit buttlow in the saddle, feet forward on the wide-splayed pegs. The Bad Boy doesn’t stretch you quite as much as would a reclining chair-a 6-foot rider still has some bend in his knees-but it’s close. The passenger seat wraps high and forward enough to just about meet the top of your Levi’s, providing greater lower-back support than with previous Softails. The handlebar stretches wide in a dirt-track bend.

Lean back slightly on the Bad Boy, bring your arms straight out to shoulder height, and then drop them 6 inches: Your hands will fall onto the big Harley grips at a

completely natural angle, no wrist contortions required. If you’re tall, you’ll find this among the best cruiser riding positions; if short, the bars may be a bit of a reach. In either case-for additional back support-you’d want a duffel strapped to the passenger seat to lean against on a cross-country ride.

As for handling, the wide handlebar and high-leverage riding position mean that you can flick the Bad Boy around in ways that belie its 633-pound dry weight and non-sporting intent. Be careful, though, because that low-and-lean look was purchased with ground clearance. Maximum lean angles are on the order of 30 degrees (many sportbikes will lean half again as far), and the mufflers on the right drag early and hard, to the point of lifting the rear wheel off the ground if you’re excessively indiscreet. For its intended use, though, that doesn’t matter nearly as much as that the Bad Boy’s front end points straight ahead as reliably and surely-and with as little attention on its operator’s part-as a compass needle seeking north. The stability comes in part from the 5.25 inches of trail given the Bad Boy’s steering; at parking-lot speeds you pay a minor price for that in the front end tending to flop into comers. It’s something you quickly get used to, however.

Softails have never ridden well, and the Bad Boy-though improved-is no exception. On choppy freeway concrete, the bike has your kidneys bouncing in resonance. Big bumps can hammer the rear suspension, and hard braking will bottom the front. On less rough asphalt surfaces, the ride becomes only slightly abmpt, and fortunately the broad saddle does much to alleviate what the suspension can’t.

What is never separate from the Bad Boy, though, is its image: It’s as butch as anything you’ll find in a San Francisco leather boutique, as purely a masculine symbol as Arnold Schwarzenegger-a self-created icon who even as the Terminator rode a Harley. That hard-core image goes a long way to explaining Harley’s success. The Bad Boy itself is a motorcycle that celebrates the sensuous pleasures of simply riding over the rush of speed, and actively discourages you with vibration and in riding position from traveling at flagrantly illegal rates. As such-just think about this-it’s a bike that your mom would approve of. And Harley’s market is proving to be largely middle-aged professional men, men who can afford the FXSTSB Bad Boy’s $13,850 entry fee, men who are far from the overwhelming msh of adolescent testosterone, men with little to prove and a lot to lose, men who don’t want a 170-mph rocketship that will test them every time they ride it. But you can’t help wondering if they’d all be as interested in the Bad Boy if it didn’t shroud its rational virtues in outlaw imagery? If it weren’t so bad-because of heritage and style-that it doesn’t have to prove it?

Let’s hope they would. The Bad Boy represents an alternative view of what’s important in motorcycling, and argues its point successfully and well. If people buy sportbikes for what the machines are capable of doing, they buy bikes like the Bad Boy for how they make them feel. If you haven’t ridden one, do: It’ll surprise you with its refinement and function. Even if what the Bad Boy represents never, ever becomes your view of motorcycling, bag a ride on one anyway. You’ll be richer for having experienced it. □

H-D BAD BOY

$13,850

Harley-Davidson Motor Co. Inc.

EDITORS' NOTES

THIS ONE GETS MY VOTE FOR BEST Commuter Bike. I’m serious. The riding position is comfortable in a laidback sort of way. Prodigious Big Twin torque means you don’t have to tap dance on the shift lever to keep up with the ebb and flow of traffic, and the bike is more maneuverable in tight quarters than anything this big and heavy has a right to be. Engine vibration is not a problem in town or for short distances on the freeway. The bottom line is that the Bad Boy is one relaxing ride, just the thing to ease the transition between home and work, or do wonders for relieving stress on the way back to the house.

As an added treat, it would be a delight to cast eyes on this bike every morning when opening the garage, or to see it waiting for you in the parking lot as you leave the job. It’s a beauty.

The local H-D afficiandos were impressed, too, continually asking, “Is this stock?” As one Softail owner said, “Tell Willie G. he done good.” -Robert Hough, News Editor

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR STEVE ANDERSON says the Bad Boy (who comes up with these names?) is the best solid-mounted Harley-Davidson he has ever ridden. After spending a couple hundred miles in the bike’s low-slung saddle, I agree.

The FXSTSB’s styling is a welcome relief from the saddlebagand windshield-equipped retro Softails that hog the local hangouts. Low and wide, the

Springer’s handlebar affords superb in-town maneuverability, though more stopping power would be appreciated, especially when dodging errant Buicks. And for nearly $14,000, I would expect-make that demand-rear-suspension components that actually damp out road irregularities. Stock, the Bad Boy’s ride is, at best, bearable.

Harley-Davidson says this is “one for the Faithful.” We’ll see about that, but for cruising Pacific Coast Highway in search of the world’s best fish taco, the FXSTSB may be

—Matthew Miles, Managing Editor

Milwaukee’s finest.

IT’S GOTTA BE A HOOT WORKING AT Harley-Davidson these days. Here’s a company that in the Eighties was only days away from the Big Chill; now it’s a genuine American industrial success story, the envy of other bike-makers everywhere. Midas is alive and well-and riding an Evo Harley, no doubt.

Contemporary assembly techniques and a huge cash outlay for modem, computer-controlled manufacturing equipment helped rescue Harley. So it’s no small irony that one of the fruits of all that forward-think is the 1995 Bad Boy, a motorcycle so steeped in retro-chic that it looks like it just stepped out of your Uncle Joe’s summer-of-’48 photo album.

As charming as the Boy is, though, I’d be worried about the Motor Company if bygone-bikes were all it made. But while H-D has one foot in the past, with the VR1000 Superbike it also is marching resolutely toward the future. It’s tough to bum the candle at both ends, but Harley seems to be pulling it off rather nicely. -David Edwards, Editor-in-Chief