Pistonheads: Cruiser Face-off

The V-Rod muscle is Harley’s fastest bike yet, a slick, drag bike with sportsbike-chasing power. In the blue corner Victory’s 1731cc Hammer S is all about oil tanker presence and the grunt to shift cities. How do you like your power cruiser kicks?

Pure V8 race car. Epic noise. Like a happy cat purring through a skyhigh stack of Marshal amps. While my notebook should be full of clinical dissections of these two bikes’ practical and dynamic strengths and shortcomings, in truth it’s filled with little else but doodles of the Victory – she’s real pretty, see – and countless attempts at capturing the sonic fury of its Victory Performance pipe in words. None come close.

More than any other bike I’ve ever written about, I wish this collection of virtual pages on your screen played a clip of the Hammer S’ mighty, full-throttle music when you clicked this page. Sure it’s “just” noise but, if you’re being like that, the Pacific ocean’s “just” a big puddle and mortality’s “just” a time limit. And right now, at large on the hill roads and quaint lanes of Sussex, the background music of a rural Friday morning in summer – the occasional whoosh of toy-strewn people carriers on the the school run; light aircraft droning lazily overhead like drunk bees; a distant breeze through the trees – is being overlaid with the thunder of the Victory’s V-twin giving it everything.

Our casual and oh-so-scientific drag races are simple in their execution: no datalogging bumbags, no Christmas tree, no printed time slips. Spot a decent-looking straight devoid of side roads, coast casually to a standstill and check you’re in first gear perhaps a dozen times. From the bridge of the Victory I glance over at editor John on the fussier but undoubtedly more contemporary V-Rod Muscle. He’s gone all Toseland on me, fixing the middle distance with a thousand-yard-stare. Because I can’t, he counts to three out load and we go, both rear tyres slewing sideways on a camber that had looked innocent enough.

The acceleration’s serious, its heavy, unseen force tugging at our bodies as they’re moved up to a speed they couldn’t manage on their own, more quickly than they were ever designed to. Over the first fifty yards we’re neck-and-neck, the contest more about reaction times than the strength of our engines. Then, sadly for the blue corner, the differences start to show. While the Victory sounds at least 1000bhp more powerful, its air-cooled motor is limited to just 5500rpm.

The Harley, with its far more modern engine architecture – two camshafts per cylinder to the Victory’s one; an oversquare bore/stroke ratio of 0.99 compared to the Harley’s 1.46 (an R1’s is 1.49) and the tighter tolerances liquid-cooling permits – can rev on to 9000rpm, holding each gear for longer and lunging ahead as the Victory shifts to second.

The Hammer’s torque advantage (a claimed 113ft.lb versus Milkwaukee’s 85ft.lb) momentarily redresses the balance but the truth is the game’s up. And with six defeats from six runs – this stretch of tarmac now looks like a Heathrow runway, with lurid scars of rubber everywhere – it looks like lunch is on me. No two ways about it, Harley’s V-Rod is a genuinely fast motorcycle. And if you all you ever do is race things in a straight line, the new Muscle’s a tool.

New for 2009, the Muscle is the latest addition to the VRSC liquid-cooled Harley family, the range H-D kicked off with the original quicksilver V-Rod in 2001. Essentially a collection of new body parts on that bike’s mechanicals, the Muscle’s a deliberately macho-looking thing with jutting, stealth fighter surfaces and a Knight Rider LED rear light. While the engine goes largely unchanged, new exhausts help make the Muscle the fastest V-Rod yet, while the chassis is a curious mix of substantial tubular steel frame, impossibly wide (240-section) rear tyre and new forks specific to the Muscle; upsidedowners of all things.

Heading south on Sussex’s meandering A-roads, the Harley’s not a hop-on-and-ride motorcycle. Road tests since time began have talked of your average Honda’s one-size-fits-all ergonomic democracy. The V-Rod is the opposite; a hard, oddly-shaped piece of like-it-or-lump-it perversity that feels like it’s been designed to be deliberately unforgiving. The seat’s rock-solid and about as contoured as a bread board, while the wide bars are a serious reach away, putting a big curve in your back and pulling your limbs out ahead of you like you’ve been plucked from a set of monkey bars, rotated 90° and dropped onto the bike.

The controls are oddly mushy too, with a weirdly disconnected feel to the heavy-ish clutch, a dead brake lever, too-fat handgrips that feel like cucumbers in your hands and a long-travel throttle you have to wring like a wet tea towel to get anything out of. As least with your head bent low over the tank cover you feel suitably purposeful, like riding the thing is a serious business.

Guiding the Harley through gentle curves all’s well. The frame’s obvious rigidity and the tyres’ sheer grip see to that. But throw some bumps into the mix, or some proper corners, and the Muscle becomes a little like hard work. The ride quality’s pretty terrible, hampered as it is by next to no suspension travel. As a consequence the spring rates and damping feel all but solid – perfect for passing every single road deflection to the base of your spine unabated.

On rough roads the back wheel either pummels your pelvis or, over depressions, leaves the road with comic regularity. Meanwhile the steering, while not overly corrupted by the big back tyre, is ponderous and plagued by an unwelcome sense of disconnection, particularly at low speeds.

And then of course there’s the pitiful lack of ground clearance. Picture the scenario. After a decent slug of throttle in third gear you’re carrying some good speed when a wide-open and bone-dry roundabout looms large. Momentarily forgetting that even bolt upright your heels are just inches above the fast-scrolling tarmac, you pitch into siad roundabout, at which point the pegs smack home and you can’t turn any tighter. Rolling off to reduce speed, you nevertheless run wide cross some three lanes before finally making it round. Ah sweet panic, how good you taste.

Going further because buying the bike is just the start of it

V-Rod Muscle

“It’s a pretty new bike so at this stage there isn’t a huge range of accessories for the Muscle,” explains Andy Reynolds on the parts desk at Warr’s Harley-Davidson. “Aftermarket exhausts are

by far the most popular accessory. Harley aren’t allowed to offer load pipes so people tend to go for Vance & Hines – their Competition slip-on exhaust costs £579.89 – or Remus. With a sports air filter in there and a plug-in to sort the fuelling you get a little more power but, more importantly, the bike sounds like a Harley.

“You can get stuff like screens and pillion backrests for the bike too but really, not many people buy a Muscle with which to go touring. There’s a big Harley conference in July and I’d expect to see many more Muscle accessories in the wake of that.”

Victory Hammer S

“There are a number of pipes available for the Hammer S, starting with slip-on replacements for the standard pipes that look the same but have a bigger bore,” explains Gil at Thunder Road. “They’re £525 including the necessary K&N air filter and ignition map download, and we usually only fit exhausts at the first 500-mile service, so the bike’s got that running-in period out of the way. Then there are drag pipes, shotguns – which are sawn-off drag pipes – leaf blowers and the new 2-into-1, which costs £730 . The replacement touring seat costs £345 while £430 buys you a pair of bags complete with quickrelease brackets.”

To paint the Hammer S as some kind of handling benchmark by comparison, a freakish combination of Ford Mustang presence and Yamaha TZ250 agility, would be misleading, but there’s no doubt the Hammer’s happier in corners. While both bikes have decent front brakes on paper, the Victory’s feel stronger in practice, boasting feel and responsiveness in the lever. And despite the even wider rear tyre (250-section, wrapped around what must be one of the most beautiful wheels ever seen on a production motorcycle), the Victory steers easily enough, rolling around on its broad rubber with a speed that encourages silly weaving through coagulated London, the bike’s beautiful noise bouncing off bendy-buses. Monoshock rear suspension, more suspension travel and less masochistic spring and damping rates mean the Victory doesn’t come apart when the going gets bumpy either.

Mostly though, life’s just more laid back on the blue bike. The riding position’s less extreme. The bike’s sheer size and wide bars may splay your limbs wide but you don’t feel ridiculous, just in control. It’s more traditional cruiser, less screw-the-world-I’m-angry, and better for it. In fact, with the high front end and tank breaking up the windblast and a more conservative footpeg reach, the Victory’s almost motorway-comfortable.

Crucially you always feel cool on the Victory too, an undeniable truth that helps banish back pain and the discomfort of wet trousers even when you’re in the depths of the north circular on a rainy Tuesday night. It lends you and everywhere you go a special occasion magic few bikes of any type can match. Here at the office we’ve point-blank refused to return the Hammer S and, nearly a month in, it’s safe to say the bike’s sheer charisma isn’t showing no sign of waning.

So there it is. Kinda. On the back foot from the word go thanks to its God-awful colour – what is it with Harley’s obsession with metallic burgundy? – and whisper-quiet pipes, over time the Muscle fought its way back into contention. Expect traditional cruiser stomp and you’ll be left perplexed by a power delivery/chassis combination that at first feels wrong and upsidedown. Where you expect instant wallop fading into high-rev indifference, the V-Rod instead offers a very little below 4000rpm and an awful lot north of 6000rpm. But get used to hanging onto gears round to the redline and there’s little capable of keeping up. Set your launch rpm just right, feed the clutch out swiftly and you’re gone; no wheelies, no slides.

Against all this anti-lock and liquid-cooled one-upmanship, the Victory stands as a monument to keeping it simple. As a shape it’s pure and without clutter. Thankfully it’s also bereft of cheesey Americana. Penned by US custom kings Arlen and Cory Ness, the Hammer’s lines are beautifully judged, its disparate elements – headlight, tank, rear “fender” – hanging together with a cohesive elegance rare on bikes without fairings. Up close the detailing and quality of finish back this up, with thick paint, nothing on show that shouldn’t be and the feeling that long after humanity’s met its fiery end, that monolith of an engine will still look magnificent. Too close to split on price, these two are defined by how they make you feel: laugh-out-loud happy or blow-the-world-away angry. We’d go with the happy option – the Hammer S is simply one of the most charismatic machines humanity’s yet managed to build.

Specifications

Harley-Davidson

Price: £12,950 Top speed: 120mph (est) Engine: 1246cc, 8-valve, liquid-cooled, V-twin
Bore and stroke: 105mm x 72mm Compression ratio: 11.5:1
Power: 123bhp at 8000rpm Torque: 85lb.ft at 6500rpm
Front suspension: 43mm upside-down forks Adjustment: None
Rear suspension: Twin shocks Adjustment: Preload only
Front brakes: 2 x 300mm discs, four-piston calipers Rear brake: 300mm disc, four-piston caliper
Dry weight: 292kg Seat height: 640mm Fuel capacity: 18.9 litres Colour options: Metallic red, silver, black

Victory

Price: £13,295 Top speed: 125mph (estimate) Engine: 1731cc, 8-valve, air-cooled V-twin
Bore and stroke: 101mm x 102mm Compression ratio: 9.4:1
Power: 97bhp (revs unknown, claimed) Torque: 113ft.lb (revs unknown, claimed)
Front suspension: 43mm upside-down forks Adjustment: None
Rear suspension: Monoshock Adjustment: Preload
Front brakes: 2 x 300mm discs, 4-piston calipers, ABS Rear brake: Single 300mm disc, 4-piston caliper, ABS
Dry weight: 303kg Seat height: 673mm Fuel capacity: 17 litres Colour options: Blue with white stripes