It's been a while since I've ridden one of Harley-Davidson's iconic grand American touring models, and with an invite to the Australasian launch on the Gold Coast, I lept at the change to swing a leg over the impressive new Road Glide and Street Glide.
If you are in the market for a premium touring motorcycle, the world really is your oyster these days with plenty of options from across the motorcycling spectrum. But if classic American touring motorcycles are tugging at your heartstrings, it is hard to look past the options from the team at Harley-Davidson.
With literally decades of experience behind them, Harley somehow manages to continue to improve their product line without taking drastic departures from the special recipe that makes a Harley-Davidson motorcycle attractive in the first place.
Case in point is the new Road Glide and Street Glide, which heavily revised the recipe from the 2023 models, the new 2024 bikes take a huge step forward in technology and handling making for a truly wonderful touring experience.
The Australasian launch consisted of a 350km loop into the hills behind the Gold Coast with plenty of tight and twisty roads to navigate with some great scenery to boot. Admission of guilt - I often think Australia is quite flat, but the landscape behind the Gold Coast is anything but. While we spent some time on highways cruising between traffic at 100kph or more, the majority of our riding was through tight twisty country roads at around the 80kph mark. Not what you think is the natural environment of a big 365kg+ tank of a bike but the upgraded Road and Street Glide were here to impress.
For 2024 Harley-Davidson worked its usual evolutionary magic on the Road Glide and Street Glide, refining the bikes further into exemplary touring machines regardless of where you sit on the spectrum. You've got plenty of luggage space thanks to the provided hard cases (with options to add even more luggage and pillion comfort), decent wind protection and now even better handling thanks to lower overall weight for both bikes and revised suspension.
At the front, Harley has shaved weight from both the fuel tank and triple clamps, resulting in less weight sitting high on the bike. The internals of the fork have revised settings to make the most of the lighter front end, while at the rear Harley has 50% more travel in the rear shock which now offers 76mm of travel.
When it comes to the engine, the Milwaukee-Eight 117 perfectly matches to the easy touring ideals that Harley had in mind when it came to redesigning the Road and Street Glide bikes. Measuring in at 1923cc (or 117 cubic inches if you want to be authentic), the 117 offers a nice balance between power and torque which I personally felt the earlier 114 engine lacked. In fact, I found myself comparing the delivery of the 117 to the more playful 107 rather than the 114.
Now, nothing makes me feel like a child than showing up to a Harley launch these days. Surrounded by dazzling colours, shiny chrome, trick gadgets and loud stereos, the kid in a candy store feeling is quite emphasised by the surrounding elder statesmen of the motorcycle media.
Despite now being in my mid-30s and a decade into my career, I’m still the youngest at the event by quite a margin, and that reflects where Harley-Davidson currently sits in the marketplace in 2024 with the brand’s focus being more on their traditional product rather pouring money into attempting to change its client base as it was a decade ago.
With the new Road Glide and Street Glide rocking price tags of over $50,000, it is fair to say these are not bikes targeted at younger riders, but regardless of who is likely to buy them, Harley-Davidson has done a cracking job of evolving their touring models into even more capable mile-munchers.
Seriously, I don’t know how they do it but Harley-Davidson somehow manages to improve upon their bikes over and over without completely reinventing the wheel. You’ve got to hand it to the boys in Milwaukee for doing that, and with the big step forward the 2024 Road Glide and Street Glide have taken, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Harley must have made a deal with the devil to make their 2024 bikes even better tourers.
Now I’m not going to be the first to say that it, but for the price of a new Road Glide or Street Glide you can buy a lot of motorcycle elsewhere on the market, or indeed, many lesser motorcycles. With pricing starting at a hefty $50,490, Harley-Davidson really needed to offer something special for the price tag, and they might just have gotten away with it with the new 2024 models.
WHAT’S NEW FOR 2024
When it comes to bike design Harley-Davidson is all about evolution rather than revolution when it comes to their core products - and big American tourers have always been a part of the brand’s identity, so you can be sure they don’t want to mess too much with what is already a pretty appealing package to many riders around the world.
Updates for 2024 include a decent weight loss ranging between 6 and 8 kilograms, revised suspension, a more powerful 117 cubic inch engine, and all-new aerodynamically tested fairings all wrapped in an array of eye-catching colours.
Along with the major updates, Harley-Davidson ANZ is also offering pre-prepared inspiration packages from the “Big Book” of official Harley-Davidson accessories to make customising a little less daunting for prospective owners.
Alongside the new Milwaukee-Eight engines, Harley has also pumped new tech in behind the all-new bodywork which sees a huge 12.3” touchscreen TFT display take over displaying all information to the rider with built in connectivity and navigation functions for those long two-up tours.
ON THE ROAD
Harley Australia chose the Gold Coast for the Australasian launch of the MY24 bikes - with the GC about as close as you can get to Florida without the extensive plane rides, I reckon - Harley also had on offer the even higher specification CVO models which add even more displacement and special equipment to the base bikes. With plenty of competition for these from the grizzled old Australian journos, I chose to focus my attention on the more reasonably priced base Street Glide and Road Glide starting the day on a black and chrome Road Glide - a classic Harley combo if ever there was one.
Starting the day on the new Road Glide in the traditional back and chrome aesthetic, it was pretty obvious where Harley has made its biggest rider-focused developments with the massive dash behind the redesigned “shark nose” fairing.
As always, thumbing the starter and igniting the 117 Milwuakee-Eight engine to life is that the latest big block engines aren’t the paint shakers of old, offering character without shaking your fillings out. To date, I think the 117 version is the best yet with it offering a nice balance between free-revving power and oodles of torque, it is a definite step up from the 114 unit it replaces in the Road and Street Glide models.
Despite its size – with the MY24 Road Glide tipping the scales at 380 kilos – it was a breeze to navigate through traffic and up into the Hinterland with its ergonomics feeling particularly well suited to my 176cm frame.
I’m guilty of looking at Harley’s range and thinking they are all basically the same to ride with their big engines and even bigger aesthetics, but jumping from the Road Glide to the Street Glide revealed that while they can appear incredibly similar, there is far more going on than meets the eye.
The Street Glide weighs 12 kilos less than the Road Glide at 368kg ready to roll. They are hefty machines in anyone’s books, but to my surprise once lifted off the sidestand they were very easy to manage. Interestingly for me, a big surprise was the heavier Road Glide felt the easier machine to manage with a much lighter steering feel than the Street Glide.
This is due to the fairing on the Road Glide being mounted directly to the frame, while the Street Glide has its fairing mounted to the triple clamps and forks and its handlebars sitting in an overall lower position. Less weight attached to the handlebars means lighter steering feel and I quickly found myself yearning for the lighter feeling Road Glide.
Another consideration when shopping for a touring motorcycle is what you get for your money. Harley has admittedly been a bit slow in fully embracing digital interfaces like its main competitor has, holding on to the traditional analogue gauges as long as it could. But it appears time is up on the old-school gauges with the new Street Glide and Road Glide both benefitting from Harley’s new 12.3” touchscreen dash.
Packed into the infotainment system is all the electronics you could ask for on a long journey, with displays covering navigation, tyre pressure monitoring, outside temperature and more. Phone connectivity is a given and Harley has also changed intercom allegiances to Cardo offering a branded Cardo Packtalk intercom for the first time.
Admittedly you will want to read the user manual thoroughly, as the array of switches on the handlebars was at first quite overwhelming. It is, however, an intuitive system and doesn’t take long to get a handle on.
With that said, a downside of the plethora of tech on offer is it can become a distraction, and I had to force myself to pay attention to the traffic on the highway rather than cycle through the array of radio stations on offer in a futile search for some AC/DC to rock out to through the built-in speakers built in the fairing.
However, while the tech package itself is pretty impressive, strip it away and you are left with a pretty impressive motorcycle beneath it. The new 2024 Harley tourers really do step up their game in the sector.
I found myself marvelling at how well these truly massive motorcycles handled as we wound our way through the Gold Coast Hinterland. The tight twisting roads would be more associated with hoons on much sportier machines, but the big Harley’s took it in their stride with the updated suspension soaking up bumps while the footboards remained unscathed throughout the ride.
If anything, Harley should be commended for simply ensuring you can have a tonne of fun in tight twisties on these big touring bikes without scraping them into oblivion.