2011 Harley-Davidson XR1200X - COOL WALL VOTE: COOL

[QuietMonkey]

Rode the XR1200X: 30 minute stint, briefly down highway, onto a little backroad loop and back into town for some urban feel.

To be brief, this bike is 50% styling exercise, 20% sport, 30% standard.

A 2011 bike that feels a lot like 1981 bolted to 1990. Old air-cooled, push-rod power plant design has been updated a bit and mounted well enough to be decently smooth with some torque, and character (that's character not horsepower - it doesnt have enough of that for a 1200).

It starts to put out decent power just as it hits that old-skool redline of about 6.5K rpm, while a Ducati Hypermotard is really flying until at least 8000 rpm. The seat/bar/footpeg placement was like "we think it goes like um --this?-- but we also think you are short and like to ride cruisers most of the time. We forgot all the smart things Buell showed us." Really.

It's like H-D woke up in a hospital bed with amnesia and just plum lost the last 20 years and went back to 1980, built a 20-year old standard, that's as long as a cruiser, with a ridiculously wide engine (oh sorry, engine, primary drive and transmission assembly - because "we think we had it right in 1965 or for sure by 1970, so we didnt want to make it any smaller in the last 40 years"

Chassis:

Nothing definitive because it was a loaner, but at slow speeds (<120km/h sweepers) it's stable like old Ducati's -- probably due to the lowwwww center of gravity and because it's longish at 60 inches and doesn't have complete junk (for suspension) attached to it. But I didnt try to make it do anything special. I rode it like a standard. Even a Monster is only 57-inches and pure sports are 55 or 54 inches typically.

The braking felt about 1990 era... good enough for a street ride but nothing like even my old 1999 R6 for power or light feel, and a light-year away from the one-finger Brembos on the Ducati Monster 800 I rode a few years back, or the superlative brakes on the last decent real sportbike I rode, a 2006 GSXR600. The Harley is heavy and the control feel probably mimics what Harley riders are accustomed to. Nothing "bad" about it necessarily, just *nothing* like more recent stuff from other sportbike manufacturers.

Styling: Looked better in person, with the aluminum exhaust cans rather than "black black and more black" in the photos i've seen.

Ergo's: No good for me. Far too low a seat height. Maybe a 5'6 person would fit best. Standard bar not bad, but too high given the low seat height.

Clutch was fine, but it's not like I really tested it. The shifting has a long throw, is pretty chunky, but no problems. Downshifts fine with a little blip, and I play-shifted more than normal for kicks. Sounds good.

As for power, I liked it for what it is... a street standard, not a sportbike. It's time to shift after 6000-6500 although i think is 7000... when you are just getting to the point that you are thinking hey this thing is coming on really well... where a Hypermotard is saying no problem, buddy, i can keep pulling like a supercharged freight-train for a couple thousand more. The Harley power-to-weight probably gives acceleration comparable to the Monster 800, but does it differently because of the torque, giving better low-end and no revs. Of course 50% more displacement, will do that. I prefer the power characteristics of the XR1200 over the Monster 800, but that is the only part of the bike which is better. The powertrain packaging, etc are nowhere near any current bike i can think of.. one of the worst charcteristics is the wide wide engine/primary-drive/transmission. The top of the bike/fuel-tank area is narrow, but your legs are another 12 inches apart down low, so you cant grip the tank properly and use you abs to gain leverage for steering inputs. It sucks. Again not a proper sort bikpe, just a standard bike that's a bit flawed... some people may like it for it's odd character.

Price: $13,000 Canadian

For a reasonable comparison:

The 2011 Ducati Monster 1100 Evo (another old air-cooled design) has another 10-hp claimed, the same torque (although at higher revs), and 150 lbs less weight claimed. That 150lbs is about 3/4 the weight of a 250f dirt bike (without giving you the extra 30hp that that 250f weight needs to haul it around fast). The Monster retails for $500 more and judging from previous experience and current specs will wals all over the XR1200X which needs a severe Revolution rather than a 20 year old evolution.

The Harley belief is that it's a real "hot-rod". It's not, but it's *alright* engine wise, just not anything really great. If you are a normal Harley owner, you might believe that after riding there cruisers or touring bikes. If you are something else and like sport bikes, every other manufacturer out there has something better (some of them 10 or 20 years ago). And even in Harley terms the XR is a little weaker in the low-end than others.. a bit of a trade-off for the added top-end. Probably has some Screamin' Eagle kit that you could install in any other Sportster engine. I guess if you want a Harley standard then you want a Harley, otherwise, meh.

For a value comparison:

For the money, compare it to say a Yamaha FZ8 (or some other Japanese bike) that will eat it for lunch. In Canada it's $10.500. So go buy a set of slip-on mufflers, new riding gear, and some other goodies if you like.

[hera]

Nothing fancy but it is cool!

[ceemes]

I voted fail.

Not sure who HD is marketing this bike to, but it is too radical for HD's traditional market demographic and not radical enough for the younger crowd. Plus when I first looked at the pictures, the first thing that popped in my mind was, oh look, a late 70's early 80's Honda 750 CBF or the like.