2022 Harley-Davidson Road Glide Special

It’s loud, it’s proud. It’s Harley-Davidson’s 2022 Road Glide Special and the eagle has indeed landed in Singapore!

Boasting an oil and air cooled, belt-driven, V-twin Milwaukee-Eight 114 engine producing 100hp @ 5020rpm and 158Nm of torque. With a 1868cc engine mated to a 6-speed gearbox, this behemoth is not just a bike. It’s a VIP ticket into the big boy’s club.

It’s the boss and it looks the business, a beautiful gloss black paintwork with matching blacked out components, full fairing and a long wheelbase. They’ll know when you roll into town, especially when you’re rocking some tunes on those 50 watt speakers. Just like you’ll know when an American has walked into a room, this bike is definitely not for wallflowers.

First introduced in 1979, Harley-Davidson has been faithfully recreating this bagger styled Road Glide with its unique fixed fairing and this 2022 version features 19” and 18” gloss black cast-aluminium Prodigy rims shod with Harley-Davidson Series D408F and D407T in the front and rear respectively. Dual bending valve telescopic front fork handle suspension duties up front while dual preload adjustable rear shocks (which are only available on one side, with a twist of a knob) handle the rear.

Dual 300mm floating rotors paired with dual 32mm, 4-piston fixed Brembo callipers handle braking in the front while a fixed 300mm rotor with a single 32mm, 4-piston fixed Brembo calliper handle stopping duties in the rear. The brakes on the 2022 Harley Davidson Road Glide Special come supported by a 2 channel ABS as standard. Harley’s Reflex Defensive Rider Systems or RDRS, which is a combination of ABS, traction control and cornering ABS comes as an option. We, however, believe that this is essential and should have come standard on this class of motorcycle.

The HD Road Glide Special lights up pretty nicely with a partial LED lighting package, an LED headlight, LED tail light and those auto self-cancelling incandescent signal lights.

The passenger seat is a tiny sliver of fabric and cushion and does an average job of supporting any human derriere. You can almost feel the plastic backing of the cushion after a long stint on the seat. Even a pillion back support might be handy to give a little confidence to your co-pilot.

This Harley-Davidson is a sum of its parts, that huge dash, that speaker system, the undeniable road presence and of course, that exhaust note. On the move, it shows a nimbleness that belies its weight, but things start to get busy when you slow down or try to stop. The rear brakes were bitey but those front brakes do just an adequate task of shedding speed and require a little more time to get the job done. In stop-go city traffic, the weight – all 387kgs of it, makes itself felt, threatening to lie on its side if you tip it over too much, which always breaks us into moments of panic. All these coupled with considerable heat build-up only add to the discomfort of riding in Singapore. Perhaps this bagger would be more in its element if we were touring in a cooler climate with gradual sweeping curves before us, but we digress.

The Road Glide Special is not made for all-out performance, but this generation has moved it up a notch. Less vibrations and a lot more smoothness than its predecessors, it wasn’t as torquey as we had anticipated and it was surprisingly manageable in the low revs. Remember this is still the big boy’s (or girl’s) club and we would not recommend this leviathan for newer Class 2 riders, it’ll even catch some experienced riders out with its weight. The payoff, of course, would be lots of attention, which we got in spades, as we blast our favourite tunes and glide into the sunset.

It’ll take a very special and committed individual to ride this iteration of Harley-Davidson’s Road Glide in Singapore, but if you have the cash to spare ($70,000 machine price), this machine would indeed make for a very unique weekend special.

The TRI333PLE Team

See You On The Road

Credits: TRI333PLE