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General Discussion / Re: “Innovate or die?”
« Last post by cliffrod on February 09, 2026, 11:17:29 AM »You echo what I heard from everyone I knew who had a V-Rod.
The current lineup of CVOs and "Specials" do nothing for me. I hope their new president, Mr Starrs, can right the ship.
I have always wanted to do a VR1000-themed cafe bike built around the VRod engine. That’s the origin of the platform. Even if it wasn’t the race bike that some hoped it would be, that engine in a street sport bike would be a lot of fun & probably equitable to what a Buell offered.
Between the recurring themes towards nostalgia, demise of Buell, the wholesale disposal of the air-cooled Sportster platform to foreign interests (still hard to fathom that decision) and the expansion of the water-cooled bikes in HD offerings, such as bike would seem to be a no-brainer. But Harley Davidson didn’t ask me. The more complex and less user-friendly (and less easily modified/customized beyond bolt on chrome) that their bikes get, the more their bikes become like all the rest. After the drunken glory days of the 90’s-early 2000’s and the seemingly hangover-based bad decisions of recent years, not sure where it will end for HD.
FWIW, the topics in the thread made me chuckle a little. A now-deceased friend named Sam Greenway secured a franchise and opened Fayetteville Harley Davidson shortly after returning from service in WWII. Pretty sure he got the franchise in 1947. He soon added a Schwinn Bicycle dealership under the same roof. By 1955, he relinquished his HD franchise to focus upon selling Schwinn bikes for the next 25 years. Said he made more money and had far fewer headaches. He retired to this area around 1980, so got out before it all died for the real Schwinn.
As I have said I didn't see much difference in the performance of the two bikes. The new, my '26 Special has substantially more power than my previous V7 even though the published HP's are not that much different.