Harley-Davidson Pan America

[PinHead]

Watched a bunch of vids from places like ADV rider etc. and they all surprisingly love the bike. I guess we all didn’t have much hope for Harley putting out a decent ADV bike, and it seems they proved most of us wrong. The adjustments they allow for about everything is pretty nice as well, 3 different seats with different heights as well as being able to adjust each one individually a couple notches is pretty sweet. You can go on and on with all of the nice features, let’s just hope they add some of them to the cruiser line up.

[capitalcrew]

I overheard a lot of people talking about this bike over the weekend at the dragon. Seems like a lot of people are interested, harley riders and otherwise. Kinda neat to see the buzz about something different from HD.

[SRTie4k]

I just wish they would offroadify it a bit more. Gotta say the biggest limitation of my bike is the relatively poor offroad performance compared to my buddy's 1290SAR. I'd love to see a 21/18 Dirt Glide with conventional shocks and a bit more ground clearance.

[nhbubba]

The market for that is relatively tiny. These are being sold mostly to dudes that ride 98% on paved road. Face it, this is basically the modern sport-touring segment. The old slight forward lean, sport-bike aesthetics formula for an ST is basically dead. This is the modern FJR, VFR, etc.

Asking a company that has almost no modern dirt-bike experience to make an 11/10th sized dirt-bike is a pretty big jump.
KTM and the Japanese makes are the ones for that; strong offerings in both dirt and street segments.

[SRTie4k]

The market for that is relatively tiny. These are being sold mostly to dudes that ride 98% on paved road. Face it, this is basically the modern sport-touring segment. The old slight forward lean, sport-bike aesthetics formula for an ST is basically dead. This is the modern FJR, VFR, etc.

Asking a company that has almost no modern dirt-bike experience to make an 11/10th sized dirt-bike is a pretty big jump.
KTM and the Japanese makes are the ones for that; strong offerings in both dirt and street segments.

I'm fully aware of the target demo.

It's funny what you say about having almost no modern dirt bike experience, because as a company that similarly had no modern adventure or sport touring experience, they somehow pulled the PA out of their asses. Seems like Harley can do pretty much anything when they put their minds, dollars and collective will to it. If anyone could sell a dirt worthy bike to the traditional offroad crowd (i.e. a bunch of rednecks), I'd think it's Harley.

[Garandman]

The market for that is relatively tiny. These are being sold mostly to dudes that ride 98% on paved road. Face it, this is basically the modern sport-touring segment. The old slight forward lean, sport-bike aesthetics formula for an ST is basically dead. This is the modern FJR, VFR, etc.//

Truth.

See a bunch of new GS’s (300-1250) at YB events and most bought them for riding position, luggage, weather protection and tractability.

[capitalcrew]

I'm fully aware of the target demo.

It's funny what you say about having almost no modern dirt bike experience, because as a company that similarly had no modern adventure or sport touring experience, they somehow pulled the PA out of their asses. Seems like Harley can do pretty much anything when they put their minds, dollars and collective will to it. If anyone could sell a dirt worthy bike to the traditional offroad crowd (i.e. a bunch of rednecks), I'd think it's Harley.

I know an engineer at harley and.... they're doing a lot over there. I don't think they're going to be working on a legit dirt worthy bike, but, I think they're going to keep trying to step outside of their comfort zone.