2013 Harleys revealed

Nothing to see here. Move along, please.

Posted: 21 August 2012
by Visordown News

SO, what has Harley done to update its bikes for 2013? Water-cooled engines? Bigger capacities? More power? Better handing?

Or has the firm taken the other route, and opted for “precisely bugger-all” in the way of updates as it enters its 110th anniversary year?

Yep, we have a winner. It's option two. Apart from a couple of new CVO models and some minor styling tweaks to the Street Bob's rear fender, the changes for 2013 take place entirely in the paint shop. Well, those R&D guys need some R&R, don't they?

Here's Harley's summary of the new range:

NEW MODELS AND NEW OPTIONS FROM HARLEY-DAVIDSON FOR 2013

110th Anniversary Editions, Hard Candy Custom Styling, and a Restyled Street Bob

MILWAUKEE (August 20, 2011) – Harley-Davidson rolls into its 110th model year with a line of authentic American motorcycles that includes 110th Anniversary Editions of select Harley-Davidson® motorcycle models and a restyled Dyna® Street Bob® model. Harley-Davidson Custom Vehicle Operations (CVO)TM offers two new models, the CVO™ Breakout™, a high-performance Softail® model with exciting new finish options, and the CVO™ Road King®, fitted with an innovative vented windshield and high-output audio system.

Also new for 2013, Harley-Davidson launches Hard Candy Custom™, a styling movement rooted in themes first seen in the chopper era of the late 1960s that embraces dazzling metal flake paint, brilliant chrome, and styling details in accessories, gear and apparel. Hard Candy Custom elements include "big flake" paint finishes, three of which will be selectively offered as a solid-color option on five Harley-Davidson production motorcycles for 2013.

H-D1™ Factory Customization expands with the Street Bob joining the 1200 Custom as Harley-Davidson models in the web-based program that allows customers to select factory-installed options in more than 2,000 combinations, build a bike on the screen, and then order it through an authorized Harley-Davidson dealer.

More than a century of experience, knowledge and riding passion lies behind each 2013 Harley-Davidson.

Highlights of the 2012 Harley-Davidson line include:

Ten Harley-Davidson models are offered as 110th Anniversary Editions, each serialized and featuring exclusive paint and commemorative solid bronze fuel tank badges. Production will vary by model and will be strictly limited to ensure exclusivity. These models come with all available factory-installed options as standard equipment. (See separate release for more details on the 110th Anniversary Editions.)

The Harley-Davidson® Street Bob® gets a tougher profile for 2013 with new blacked-out triple clamps and powertrain, and a chopped rear fender with side-mounted license plate and stop/turn/tail lights. This rowdy Dyna bobber features a solo seat and mini-ape handlebar mounted on new risers that make it easier to customize the Street Bob. New paint options include Hard Candy Custom metalflake and a scalloped two-tone option. (See separate release for more details on the 2013 Street Bob.)

The Street Bob serves as a great starting point for customization, and now along with the 1200 Custom it can be personalized through H-D1 Factory Customization with options selected by the customer using the online Bike Builder on Harley-Davidson.com, and installed as the motorcycle is assembled by the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. By choosing from different wheels, paint and engine finishes, the customer can dramatically alter the look of the motorcycle. Different combinations of foot-control location, seat choices and handlebar can be selected to adjust the fit of the motorcycle to rider stature.

Hard Candy Custom embraces a trend that's reemerged from garages around the globe. Now the sparkle of Hard Candy Big Red Flake, Hard Candy Lucky Green Flake and Hard Candy Coloma Gold Flake can be ordered as Original Equipment paint and serve as the foundation for personal customization. At least one Hard Candy Custom color will be offered on these Harley-Davidson motorcycle models: Seventy-Two™, Street Bob®, Blackline®, Softail® Deluxe, and Forty-Eight™. New and recently introduced Genuine Motor Accessory and Harley-Davidson® MotorClothes® items extend the Hard Candy Custom theme. (See separate release for more details on Hard Candy Custom.)

The 2013 CVO™ series of limited-production premium custom motorcycles features the new CVO™ Breakout®, a bold Softail® model that takes production motorcycle finishes to a new level with two paint schemes that feature hand-polished steel sections on the fuel tank and fenders. The CVO™ Road King® offers the first factory-installed Road King® audio system, and the new detachable Vented Wind Splitter windshield. The super-premium touring CVO™ Ultra Classic® Electra Glide® and shark-nose CVO™ Road Glide® Custom bagger return with new features for 2013. (See separate release for more details on the 2013 CVO line.)

The versatile Harley-Davidson® Sportster® line includes five models, plus the Sportster® 1200 Custom Anniversary Edition. New colors and graphics are offered on all Sportster® models.

The traditional "hard tail" lines of the Harley-Davidson Softail® platform are offered on six models, including the Softail® Slim™, a back-to-basics 1950's-style bobber introduce mid-year 2012. The 2013 Fat Boy® now features Mirror Chrome Aluminum Bullet Hole Disc wheels as standard equipment. The Softail® line also includes Heritage Softail® Classic Anniversary Edition and the Fat Boy® Lo Anniversary Edition.

Eight Harley-Davidson® Touring models, from the slammed-and-trimmed Street Glide® to the fully equipped Electra Glide® Ultra Limited, are ready to tackle the long road with fresh color and graphics options. The Road King® Anniversary Edition and Electra Glide® Ultra Limited Anniversary Edition are available in limited quantities for 2013.

The smooth-handling 2013 Dyna® line includes the re-styled Street Bob and four more models, plus the Super Glide® Custom Anniversary Edition.

The aggressive Harley-Davidson® V-Rod® power-cruiser line features the Night Rod® Special and V-Rod Muscle®, each available in new colors for 2013.

Riders looking for a Trike option with Harley-Davidson quality can turn to the Tri Glide® Ultra Classic®, also available Tri Glide® Ultra Classic® Anniversary Edition to celebrate a milestone.

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Discuss this story

Bob Brunnen 2

Yawn!
What a pile of corperate bullshit!

Harley If you really want to sell bikes people want,

try re-introducing replica panhead,knucklehead,shovelhead and flat headhead motors with points & carbs on at sensible prices

If S&S can do it so can you.

All this retro stuff is available after market and selling like hot cakes,

take your head out of your arse and wake up.

The UK bike buying public have seen through your stunt of painting everything matt black and charging a f*****g fortune for it and introducing it as a "new model" with some utterly stupid sounding name
which the Yanks seem to go mad over.

14/15K for a new Harley in the UK is taking the piss
and its no wonder there are now more bikes than buyers.

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 13:31

kwh

They have R&D guys? Yeah, right! Of course they do! Not!

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 13:37

Bill Connor

Yanks don't go mad for new names and black paint, we actually do appreciate variety and new models. The issue some of us take with these reviews is the lack of understanding of what a cruiser is. It is not a sport bike, it is not an ultra high hp vehicle for taking public road corners at a high rate of speed. What it is designed for is well cruising back roads, enjoying the open air, riding to destinations far away in comfort and some would argue style. Yes it is a push rod V-Twin that is air cooled. It does have FI, ride by wire throttle, ABS, heated grips, seat, and all the other technology you might want. They are expensive, but honestly so is everything else. Sport bikes go up every year, factor in insurance costs and the average GSXR costs more per year to own than a new soft tail HD. For reference I do not own a HD, I do ride a cruiser currently.

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 13:40

kwh

PS: The bikes 'people' want, the bikes that 'motorcyclists' want or the bike that 'Harley Riders' want? I'm not sure that 'people' have much idea, really. They've /heard/ of Harley Davidson, the brand is everything, but they have also heard of Ducati. Motorcyclists? The number who want a third of a tonne of scarily wobbly, hugely overpriced, woefully under-braked, ill-handling chrome death trap, at least outside the US of A, is extremely limited. Most of the customers for such things will surely be people with too much money and not enough sense - and people who will never ride them. As for Harley Riders, my understanding is that for the last 40 years they have wanted nothing to change at all ever. Although now, as they enter their dotages, they may want their chrome-plated cast-iron pool-loungers to come with a third wheel at the back to save geriatric legs from the strain of holding the behemoths up at traffic lights. Presumably once they have all died off, Harley Davidson will be the emperor who has just realised that everybody else has realised, that he is standing in the middle of the street bollock naked...

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 13:56

whitecraw

Or has the firm taken the other route, and opted for “precisely bugger-all” in the way of updates as it enters its 110th anniversary year

They look the same as the ones they have been producing for the last 110 years! Lumpy, thumpy vibrating pieces of ... Everythting that is bad in engineering.

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 14:24

ripsawII

Aw come on they can't be that bad. There must be something good about harleys.

They sound nice.
I actually like the look of some of the less ostentatious ones.
They hold their value, bizarrely (maybe because they don't change much thus don't date).
Maybe that brief punch of torque is as addictive as the powerband on a tuned stroker.
I would love one as a third or maybe fourth bike for that one sunny day of the year when slow seems like a good idea. But only if it was cheaper than a bandit 600, to which it would be inferior in virtually every measurable respect...

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 15:54

Simon Bartlett-McCourt

I want character, with a soul, I want to ride the bike and have to read the road, get out what I put in, every time I swing a leg over I feel a sense of occasion, might go for a blast with my Bud for the day, or just to grab some milk, but always feels like a adventure, and nearly every time I get back to my bike there is a couple of people looking and smiling at her, I want to sit on my drive polishing her with my daughters helping, I like the fact that a lot of people are nervous about bikes, but have always dreamed of being on the back of a Harley, That's why my dream and now a reality is my Harley-Davidson Fat Boy

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 18:00

jimlindsay

Good for Harley for avoiding the "Must have the latest" syndrome.

Love 'em.

Just off to France on an Electra Glide. It'll make a comfy change from my GSXR 750.

Posted: 21/08/2012 at 19:55

backasswards

Sweet, sweet CVO logos. Worth their weight in gold they are, even if they are chromed plastic.

Posted: 22/08/2012 at 05:04

peter cakes

I quite like the look of that one in the picture. The pipes, the forward facing air intake, the forward footpegs and those wheels.......... if it comes with a 2 litre engine capacity too I would be first in line to buy it.

Posted: 22/08/2012 at 08:25

minirollsrule

@ Simon Bartlett-McCourt

if you want all your talking about but with the added bonus of fuel economy and cornering ability then look no further than the Kwak Versys 650

Its got character, being jut as vibey as a harley, and sounds great with aftermarket exhausts. I always get people asking me what it is and where i have been. Its definatly an adventure bike, not in the sence of fording every stream, but it will tackle a dirt road and grassy hills with ease.its also confortable for long distances having done 16hours straight riding on a marathon back to the calais ferry (we've all been there...)

STOP PRESS!!

its also a fucking bargain compared to a harley

Posted: 22/08/2012 at 12:56

sexdrugs'n'rockingmole

Thankfully there are some on VD who have started to avoid the corner-speed-is-everything-I'm-dead-quick-me machismo of UK bike press / culture. Couldn't agree more with Simon and Jim - not everyone wants "good cornering" becuase they have no interest in doing everything at speed; ergo they don't need such a thing.
To Mini, I would say that the Versys is a good bike, but of no interest to someone who likes cruiser style bikes. Just as a Versys would be of limited appeal to a Fireblade addict, or that a Fireblade has no appeal to a Trials rider.
To KWH, Harley's Darkcustoms range and revamped sportsters are doing a lot to recapture the youth market and reinvent the sportster "brand". These bikes are not the headline grabbing launch models though (just as the CBR125 or 250 aren't when there is a new 'Blade).
As for the price - partly down to exchange rates, but you'd also cough up a pretty penny for a premier model Yamaha these days. So, if you don't determine premiere by performance alone [and if performance isn't important to you, why would you?], the gap ain't so big.

Posted: 23/08/2012 at 11:23

ripsawII

Its purely down to the ol' form-over-function arguement.

Harleys are successful because of their image not their performance. The R&D dept may not have much of a work ethic but the Marketing dept is a coke-fueled mad man!

Posted: 23/08/2012 at 12:48

Nick Name 998

Says it all "Hard Candy Custom Styling, and a Restyled Street Bob

Like the F150 and the million other sub 20mpg vehicles sold in the US each year. Inefficient, wasteful and daft means of transport.

Posted: 23/08/2012 at 14:37

Bill Connor

HD average over 40 mpg and in most cases get close to 50 mpg.

Someone define performance and I will have someone else define it and guess what, it won't always be the same. Men like women, we may not agree all the time on who's the prettiest but we all like them.

Same as the form over function comment above. What is the intended function of the motorcycle? Is it truly form over function if the bike, stops, turns, and accelerates at a fairly good pace but is not the fastest? That would make any bike under 1000CC form over function if the criteria was based solely on outright speed and handling.

Posted: 23/08/2012 at 18:14

ripsawII

If the intended function is form then you end up with a harley.

Also, some men like men more. They also end up with a harley.

Posted: 24/08/2012 at 09:28

Dan Davis

HD is an institution and so are their motorcycles. Subtle changes mean that they have it right and don't need a hugh change. Still, I feel that they are offering too many models to sustain a solid financial footing, but I still invested in the company, and am awaiting the arrival of a '13 Road King Classic in pearl white.

Posted: 25/08/2012 at 18:53