When we first laid eyes on the brand-new Harley-Davidson XR1200 we knew it was a bike we wanted to ride. Little did we know back in 2006, when the bike was first shown at the Intermot show in Germany, that this desire was going to be a bit harder to fulfill than we expected.
The problem, as we later found out, was that the new XR1200 Sportster wasn’t conceived for American consumption. A bike made in the U.S. of A, but sold in France (as well as the rest of Europe, South Africa and the Middle East) just rubbed our fur the wrong way. Thankfully, we were able to sweet-talk the crew from Juneau Avenue into giving us exclusive access to the secret Florida test facility where they tuned handling and suspension on the bike. They even shipped a test unit back here to California. This enabled our staff—including longtime Sportster expert Allan Girdler—to sample the bike on familiar roads. We also sent Test Editor Don Canet out to get performance figures and roll it up on our dyno to get horsepower and torque numbers.
After reluctantly handing the keys back, one thing was crystal clear: Everyone here who rode the bike was very impressed. Not only did most of us think it was the best Sportster ever, some even dared call it the best Harley ever! Read the first full road test of the XR1200 in the August edition of Cycle World.
