Rolling across the Wisconsin prairie on way too little sleep and not enough coffee had my mind focused on the aroma of cow and how so much of the heartland unfurls like a rumpled blanket. Wisconsin makes for fun riding, but a particular kind; there are fewer banked corners but endless gentle ones to throttle through at speed.
Luckily I wasn’t there alone and had Harley-Davidson staff to guide my way — and also the way of a fistful of journalists there, like me, to ride the Motor Company’s newly improved Custom Vehicle Operations Road and Street Glide rigs. And this was no run-of-the-mill debut: These bikes are Harley’s crown jewels and were debuting on the advent of the brand’s 120th-anniversary celebration.
Back in Milwaukee, where we’d started the day four hours before, tens of thousands of Harley riders were streaming into town for an epic weekend-long celebration featuring bespoke embroidered leather garb (acres of it) and enough chrome to be seen from space. (Officially, H-D says 73,000 bikes flooded the city.) Both Green Day and the Foo Fighters would play a few days after I saddled up.
But before those bands would set foot on stage, I was bombing along, fighting back yawns, and wondering if I had either of their respective greatest hits on my iPhone since both the new CVO Street Glide and Road Glide come equipped with a Rockford Fosgate Stage II audio system that’s specifically sound focused, so that all four speakers (two in the fairing and two in the saddle bags) belt up to 500 watts of music directly at the rider. Pair your bike to Apple CarPlay beamed across the very legible 12.3-inch touchscreen, and whatever entertainment’s on your iPhone — as well as calls, turn-by-turn directions piped to a helmet Bluetooth headset — are all within easy integration.
Then I thought better of such a diversion; I had all the thumpety-thump backbeat I’d need in the form of a naturally aspirated, two-liter V-twin Milwaukee-Eight engine. These Custom Vehicle Operations Harleys are big, muscular bruisers with low-down torque that’ll pin a g-force grin into your cheeks — and wipe the tarmac with you if you’re not focused.
So instead, I just rode. What I lacked for caffeine and musical accompaniment was being made up for in the form of petroleum turned into thunder — and a big American kiss (or finger?) to anyone who thinks Harley-Davidson isn’t as relevant today as it’s been for the last 12 decades.
The 2023 Harley-Davidson CVO Road and Street Glide: What We Think
You could argue that Harley-Davidson is a brand boxed in by its rabid customers. It's good that they're not standing still. The new versions of the Road and Street Glides provide much-needed VVT and better cooling. And both bikes also lost weight — down 31 pounds for the Street and 35 pounds for the road — while gaining horsepower. But for all these updates, Harley’s future cannot be riffing off the same backbeat its customers call a love song from the Milwaukee-Eight.
The next tune Harley plays has to be on its new Revolution Max motor that powers the Pan Am. That motor is supposedly able to shrink in displacement yet further from the 975cc version in the Nightster and it’d be good to see the Motor Company selling more than t-shirts to a younger buyer who wants fuel efficiency and lighter, more nimble and more affordable machinery.
In India, they sell a single-cylinder bike called the X440, a small street bike that still looks Harley-ish enough. That might sound like heresy to Harley loyalists, many of whom hate the existence of the Pan-Am already, but none of them are going to run across town to buy a BMW out of spite.
The CVO Road and Street Glide are the same ... but better
Harley invited us into their labs on this trip, and we learned just how deeply the company goes on its bikes. While other motorcycle makers buy a lot of what they cob into a single machine (and by the way, so do carmakers, phone makers, etc.), Harley goes to the nth degree to keep what they create in-house proprietary.
One journalist on the trip who knows the brand well said that the Motor Company is “weird.” Explaining that further, he meant that because fans want Harleys to be Harleys, the iconic bike brand doesn’t have much choice but to keep iterating off the tried and true, because nobody else makes their bikes this way. And nowhere is that more evident than with the revised heart of these two bikes, the Milwaukee-Eight 45-degree V-twin.
It finally has variable valve timing, an invention dating back to the steam engine but first used in commercial cars in the 1980s and motorcycles about two decades ago. The advantages here are that Harley gets the cleaner emissions they desperately need to be able to keep selling in the EU, better range (we saw mixed city/highway mileage in the low 40s), and for the rider, a far smoother engine than the slightly smaller, outgoing 117 cubic-inch version. Just off idle at 3,000 rpm, you hit peak torque, plunging you forward. And that thrust isn’t the whole story, either, because the Road Glide and Street Glide motor is pretty forgiving at part throttle, too. (More on these joys in the next section.)
Prior Street / Road Glides had less torque (126 ft-lbs) that hit later in the rev band. Now you get more grunt earlier, and that equals more fun.
The other critical update, in terms of performance, comes in the form of a revamped suspension. The twin CVOs have an inverted 47mm Showa fork with 4.6 inches of travel, and at the back, there’s a spring preload-adjustable Showa shock with three inches of travel. That’s not five inches, but it beats the two inches of the prior bikes. It would be dandy to be able to adjust the front prong, but that’s not part of the package, though you can quickly soften or firm up that rear with a knob that protrudes behind the rider’s left leg, which is great if you add weight to the panniers or pick up a passenger.
The brakes are rock-sold, with dual disc front Brembos increased in size from 300 to 320mm, and also, Harley added serious tech at long last to these bikes in the form of multiple ride modes that weave in or dial out ABS, cornering ABS, and cornering traction control. Road Mode is the default, with more ABS and traction control than the next level up: Sport. That allows a bit more rear-wheel spin and quicker throttle response. Also, there’s a rain mode with maximum ABS/traction control, restrained throttle output and reduced engine braking (so you don’t bust loose the back tire on slippery surfaces). You can also create custom modes, increasing or decreasing engine braking, throttle response, and the amount of stability/ABS you want.
Oh, and because these two bikes exceed 800 pounds, a hill-holder feature lets you let go of the clutch in neutral and not have your CVO roll backward at a stoplight.
These are big bikes that can ride like small(ish) ones
Harley’s new VVT motor isn’t quite an Italian sewing machine, zinging over 10,000 rpm in half a heartbeat, but it does power up smoothly — and the better trick is that it’s also willing to loaf. Make friends with 2,800 rpm, and it’ll plod along happily. Throw it into Sport mode, and it’s yet more pliant because you can upshift earlier and still have two fistfuls of torque in your hip pocket.
Even though these are big bikes, they can ride small, to a degree. Get there by trail braking the rear wheel as the road straightens and roll onto the throttle to rocket out. No, Harley’s nannies won’t dive in and kill that muscle, and engineers later confirmed this was exactly what they wanted to achieve — Street and Road Glides that’ll dice backcountry corners, too. That party can’t get too nutty, with only 32 degrees of lean angle, and I managed to scrape pegs more than once, but for big-boy cruisers, both machines will boogie decently, and that poise carries through to the superb Showa suspension. You can upset it if you really try — the front end of the Street Glide got very light during one full-blast acceleration run that just happened to be on a pot-holed stretch of farm byway, but I can’t blame Harley for pilot enthusiasm.
The CVO Road and Street Glide are controlled and comfortable
Speaking of how planted you feel on the CVOs, Milwaukee’s highways are either miserable concrete runways or miserable concrete runways that narrow into more miserable construction zones. The bikes just plowed along through expansion joints, crock-pot-sized divots, grooves and poorly engineered repairs. I didn’t actually fall asleep while riding, but I think if I had, the Harleys would’ve kept on charging.
Oh, and if you do find yourself stuck in traffic in Milwaukee or any other city, throw out a massive hug to Harley’s engineers for improving engine cooling. We were steamed from the pavement up to our necks, but that was because of the weather; the Milwaukee-Eight was probably milder than what was baking off the sidewalks and far less hot than another Harley we got to test—one that doesn’t benefit from the CVO’s superior design.
Something I didn’t fully appreciate headed into this launch was how massive displacement aids control. The brakes will slow you quickly, but the Milwaukee-Eight will ease your pace by simply downshifting. Bombing through endless farmland, I grew to love just using the transmission to adjust speed and, at times, only featured the brakes to warn my fellow travelers I was slowing. You can’t get away with that with less compression, but playing to the CVO’s advantage is a motor bigger than the one in my car.
The redesigned fairings did cause a few issues
There are a few aspects of the redesigned fairings that raised my eyebrows. Switching from the Road Glide to the Street Glide, I noticed more effort to the steering, particularly at slow speeds, because the “batwing” is attached to the fork itself, so you’re moving that as you steer. The Road Glide felt quicker to initiate every turn, both fast and slow ones. Also, while these bikes come with an interesting cut-out in the fairing, with a mail slot in the middle, it’s not designed as “air conditioning,” but instead to route air over the rider’s helmet so you’re not getting as beat up at 65mph.
But for whatever reason, I could never find a sweet spot for that function. I’m a shorter (5’ 7”) rider, and I was constantly trying to get that current to either hit me in the torso or waft above my helmet. Eventually, I settled for the former because I never managed the latter, even if that got a bit tiring.
There are a lot of controls to navigate through
Speaking of taxing, there are a LOT of controls for this bike. And that huge screen is also touch-sensitive. Better: Use the dual D-pads (think: video game controller) on both grips, so you can toggle through settings more safely as you ride. Still, with many menus to wade through, I’d highly recommend any new CVO customer do their fiddling with the side stand down until you’ve got all your electronics sorted, then ignore those menus entirely when you’re underway.
Right about here, you should be looking down at that $42,999 sticker price and saying, “But why doesn’t it also have...” These are very expensive motorcycles, and while they have cruise control, it’s not adaptive, as you’ll see elsewhere. Also, while I could blame forward controls — which I’m not a fan of — and Harley did make shifting easier, the clutch effort is still high, and although it’s less of a stab-and-pray attempt to find neutral, the clutch-shifter interplay isn’t as buttery as you’ll find with top price-tier alternatives.
What are some Harley-Davidson Street Glide and Road Glide alternatives?
You’d have to consider Indian Motorcycles to be Harley’s biggest rival, not necessarily on raw data, but on style. And the most apt comparison here is the Chieftain, which you can into for about half the money of the Street / Road Glide ($22,999), and even at that price, its 1,811-cc Thunderstroke V-twin gets you 119 ft-lbs of torque at a magical 3,000 rpm. But we’d instead belly up to the Challenger Elite, with its slightly smaller, 1,768-cc good for a Harley-besting 128 ft-lbs from a bike that’s no heavier (839 pounds).
Even then, with 400-watt audio and Apple CarPlay, its $35,499 sticker isn’t hitting Harley’s ask. Of course, they have all the same ABS/traction control goods as Harley—and electronically controlled preload for the rear suspension, too, as well as an LED headlamp that adapts to the bike’s lean angle.
The other bruiser you have to consider would be BMW’s R18 B. That’s a distinctly German take on American bagger-dom, and that means you’re getting a 1,800-cc boxer engine worth 116 lb-ft at 3,000 rpm, but properly optioned, more like $30,000 with what you want: Like adaptive cruise control, Marshall audio, chrome kits and pinstriping. But out of the box, you get more lean angle (35 degrees vs. Harley’s 32), a very kind-to-your-touring-spine 4.7 inches of rear suspension travel, and sensors measure the bike’s payload and other factors to adjust and adapt the damping constantly.
But at 877 pounds, the R18 B is even heavier than the Harley twins, and not everyone loves the boxer engine setup (which leads to a lot of side-to-side vibration at certain revs). Still, like Harley, BMW has legions of followers, and you can bet they won’t stand still and let their Milwaukee rivals own the segment.
2023 Harley-Davidson CVO Road Glide and CVO Street Glide
- Engine: Liquid-cooled 45-Degree Milwaukee-Eight V twin
- Displacement: 1,977cc
- Gearbox: six-speed manual
- Torque: 139 lb-ft at 3,000 RPM
- Curb weight: 838 pounds (Street Glide); 862 pounds (Road Glide)
- Seat height: 28 inches
- Base MSRP: $42,999
