Harley-Davidson Sportster
IT IS OFTEN overlooked that the Harley-Davidson Sportster started out not as a street rod or style icon, but as an all-out superbike, designed to stomp the opposition into the dirt of the ovals and in main-street drag races.
Until the late 1940s Harley-Davidson’s chief market for big bikes had been police forces, the army and members of ultra-respectable clubs, for whom motorcycling was a hobby and whose members would ride sensible big Harley flat-heads wearing smart club uniforms.
But by 1948 there was a new marke – wild-eyed young men straight out of the army looking for excitement. They were not going to find that from the existing K-series flat-head, no matter how well-equipped it was with telescopic forks, swingarm rear suspension and a unit-construction engine. They were much more likely to plump for a fire-breathing unsilenced British twin, of the kind flooding the US market as the UK tried to export its way out of postwar austerity. These proto-hoodlums tried to get more performance from their flat-heads by stripped off everything that wasn’t essential, but there was no way the side valve engine was going to seriously take on a 650cc OHV parallel twin.
The first Sportster appeared in 1957 and was basically a K-series bike, even down to thetwo-stroke, the 125cc Hummer. It might have been no use for travelling further than the distance between gas stations, but the XLCH created a look that has endured ever since. By 1959, the XLCH became a fully-equipped street-legal hot rod and the XLH came equipped with high lift intake cams.
