2016 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Special — Ride Review

Chris Cope

April 12, 2016 at 11:00 AM

2016 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Special — Ride Review

According to Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich, roughly 80 percent of the bikes his company sells in the United States are touring models. Harley-Davidson sold 168,240 units in the U.S. market in 2015, which, according to my fuzzy math, works out to 134,592 touring bikes sold in a single year.

That's more than the total number of motorcycles and scooters—of all brands—sold in the United Kingdom in the same period. Which speaks to the value of the touring segment for Harley, and why the company's Project Rushmore initiative of a few years ago was so important.

Those big numbers may also help explain why seemingly every motorcycle I see when visiting my home state of Texas is a Street Glide.

They're far rarer here in Britain, though, so when an opportunity came up to spend a day with a 2016 Street Glide Special, I jumped at it. If nothing else, I was eager to see what my Texas brethren love so much about this iconic touring bagger.

First Impressions

There's no denying it looks cool, but upon swinging a leg over, the first thing that struck me about the Street Glide Special was how cramped its ergonomics were. I felt I was sitting in a Smart car. Apparently this is just the Harley-Davidson experience; I've been squished every other time I've ridden a Harley.

It's a strange and counterintuitive thing to feel so contorted on an infamously large and heavy bike. I've ridden cruisers from Indian, Victory, Triumph and Yamaha, and only Harley has ever left me feeling like a dad on his kid's Big Wheel. As a result, I can't help but think that an essential element of the bike is lost on me.

There's an implicit expectation in the Harley-Davidson experience that one should forgive less-than-amazing performance and braking for the sake of "character." This implicit expectation is at the heart of critics' disapproval of the brand. I don't mind it so much; I get the idea of character. But when I'm sitting like this, like an old lady on a mobility scooter, I don't feel cool. I feel silly.

Clearly, though, Harley thinks this rider triangle works, and no doubt it does for many people. I'm a lanky 6 feet 1 inch tall; if you are 5-foot-something, you may find this set up far more appealing.

Engine and Transmission

With history and heritage being one of the selling points of Harley-Davidson ownership, I decided it was appropriate to point the Street Glide Special toward Kidwelly Castle, a Norman fortress built more than 900 years ago.

Like most of Harley's bikes, the Street Glide Special employs a keyless fob system, which I think is cool. However, there's a steering lock/ignition switch that requires a key before the fob can be used, so I'm not entirely sure what the point is.

Nonetheless, once the bike started up I kind of didn't care. One of the primary complaints waged against Harley-Davidson products is that they feel agricultural. Indeed they do; riding a Harley is like riding a tractor. But something the haters neglect to mention is that riding a tractor is awesome.

Even with stock exhaust, the bike emits a deep, maniacal-laughter-inducing grumble at idle. The whole thing shakes with each kick of the pushrods. The experience is visceral. The happy truth of all internal-combustion-engined motorcycles is that you are effectively sitting on top of a metal box of explosions, but here you really feel it. You know it.

Initially, the experience is delightful. You ride around over-revving the engine just for kicks, and fighting the urge to shout: "Look at meeee!" Problems arise, however, when you attempt to use the Street Glide Special toward its stated purpose of touring.

Tackle a long stretch of highway and all that noise and shuddering will get on your nerves. Push the 1690cc air-cooled V-twin engine toward 80 mph and it fights you, desperate to lurch back to slower speeds. Keep fighting to make progress and you'll soon feel the engine's heat on your legs. The temperature was just 6ºC (or 43ºF) on the day I rode to Kidwelly, but by the end of my ride the heat pouring onto my right leg in particular was something close to painful.

The Street Glide Special's six-speed transmission is solid enough, each gear announced with the reassuring KATHUNK we've come to expect from cruiser transmissions. No real complaints beyond my feeling that first is too low and second too high. It's the sort of thing you could probably get used to, though. You'd have to also get used to an aching left hand, because clutch pull is anything but light.

Ride Quality and Brakes

Because the Victory Cross Country and Indian Chieftain were clearly styled to compete against the likes of a Street Glide Special, I frequently found myself comparing my experiences with those bikes to this one. And it was here that, for me, the Harley really fell short.

Suspension was subpar; handling was awkward at low speed and unsteady at high speed. Somewhere in the sweet spot between 30-60 mph, things were OK, but I still felt every bump and imperfection in the road being transmitted to my lower back. Pushing through corners was a full-body effort and, of course, the scraping of floorboards became part of the cacophony of sound when things got particularly twisty.

The weight of the bike never really goes away. In some strange sense you can feel it even in the straights. But, I suppose, that contributes to a feeling of surefootedness you might want in a long-distance machine. Certainly within the 30-60 mph window the bike felt solid against an early-spring squall blowing in from the sea.

It was during that sudden deluge, however, that I discovered the Street Glide Special's stock Dunlop Multi-Tread tires are considerably less than great in the wet stuff. Not as awful as the Dunlop Elite 3s that are used on some other touring V-twins (e.g. the Victory Vision), but definitely not great. Feel from the tires was minimal and left me unwilling to lean too far into a turn.

Tires are something you eventually have to replace on a bike anyway, though, so I wouldn't necessarily allow the Dunlops' poor performance to affect my purchasing decision. According to Jesse Kiser, Metzeler makes some pretty good shoes.

The Street Glide Special's brakes are decent enough, if a bit soft, but great googly-moogly does the front end dive when the bike's dual front discs are squeezed. It's a stereotype of cruiser riders that they don't use the front brake, but you certainly couldn't blame someone for such behavior if he or she were aboard this rocking horse. Meanwhile, ABS comes standard and is unobtrusive to the point of taking a fair bit of work to engage.

Continue Chris' Review Below

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