The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

Harley Davidson Finally Breaks the Cruiser Mold With the Pan America and Bronx

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The 2020 Harley Davidson Pan America in flight, when’s the last time you saw a Harley getting air time?

It’s seems a few designers and engineers at the Motor Company are getting the green light to look beyond cruisers, and it’s about time. Yes, there are electrics in the pipeline, but look at what they’re doing with V-twins. Coming in 2020 are two models that just might get the attention of a whole lot of new customers, the Pan America and the Bronx. I like them both, a lot.

The Harley Davidson Pan America is the multi-function go anywhere option for those less inclined to the cruiser lifestyle

For those of you who have been around The Kneeslider for some time, you know how often I’ve written about off road Sportsters and the number of builders who got tired of waiting for Milwaukee to take the hint, so they just built one for themselves. Harley kept churning out cruisers while builders started putting on long suspension and knobby tires and taking the action into the dirt. Those home built creations looked like fun and lo and behold, look at what happened, Harley came up with the Pan America. It’s not a Sportster, it’s a whole new bike powered by the new Revolution® Max 60 degree liquid cooled V-twin. The engine comes in two displacements 1250cc and 975cc, the Pan America gets the larger of the two with 145 horsepower and 90 foot pounds of torque. It’s fed by dual downdraft throttle bodies and from the photos, it’s looks like a Harley V-twin should, right down to the vestigial cooling fins. Trunk and panniers complete the picture for those weekends when you’re heading way off road.

The Harley Davidson Bronx, a naked street bike that looks like handling and performance are real considerations.

Next up is the Bronx. It gets the smaller variant of the Revolution® Max at 975cc sporting 115 horsepower and 70 foot pounds of torque. It benefits from Harley’s collaboration with Brembo and mounts a new radial monoblock four-piston caliper delivering braking feel and capability a cut above the average Harley. Michelin® and Harley-Davidson® developed co-branded tires for the Bronx and the Pan America, too, that optimize performance in all conditions.

The 60 degree, liquid cooled, Revolution Max V-twin

Both of these models are set to debut in late 2020 and I would expect this new engine will find its way into more of the line up as time goes on.

Harley appears to be waking up from its slumber, electric motorcycles, a new liquid cooled V-twin engine and off road motorcycles, it makes you wonder what’s coming next. I just hope the market responds and the appearance of all of this change isn’t too late, but whatever the case, I like these two entrants and I hope a lot of other potential customers like them, too.

Comments

  1. Only 50 years late!

    Imagine if the MoCo had responded to the gauntlet thrown down by Honda’s CB750… what kind of bikes would they be making by now?

    The Pan Am is powerful… homely, but form follows function, so looks are definitely not the priority, given its agricultural nature. Better a chain than a belt, though a shaft would have been best.

    The Bronx doesn’t look like any “streetfighter” to me, it just looks like a standard… Yamaha. That’s a good thing, especially when you consider how design excesses hobbled the V-Rod, contorting it into the cruiser that the board of directors decided the shareholders would accept. Heavy, enormous, but with cramped ergonomics, and just a *bitch* to work on!

    HD’s electric bike looks okay, and is quick enough to get out of its own way, but everybody gets range anxiety when they read the specs. I hope that improves with upcoming battery breakthroughs. As soon as batteries surpass gasoline for energy density, convenience, ubiquity, and cheapness, it’s not going to make sense to keep burning stuff.

    • The Pan America styling is on the order of the BMW GS and other similar bikes, none of which are exactly beautiful except in the functional/utilitarian way, but when we see how it performs we’ll know better how it fits into that segment. High marks to Harley for going there.

      The Bronx does resemble some other more standard bikes in the market, but again, if you’re trying to attract customers away from other brands, getting them to consider a Harley is step one and if the sound and grunt of the new engine add to the experience, it might be a winner.

      The Motor Company management from the days when the CB750 appeared is gone and current management is trying to get the company back in the game. Easy? Of course not, but you shouldn’t hold past decisions against the current guys. Let’s see what happens, it should be interesting.

  2. There are a LOT of people turned off by modern design trends. H-D is in a great position to take advantage of that.