[rt]

Thanks. And off subject, nice site!
I agree 100%, if your’ riding pals are leaving you or “making” you keep up, you need to find somebody else to ride with.
But that’s not my point.
This is really only applicable if you plan on riding with others.
Having a bike that can’t keep pace could be a confidence crusher, morale buster for that individual.
It can also be a real danger for the whole group that’s adjusting their’ pace for a slower bike on a four lane highway with a hoard of clueless cages and semi’s ripping past at 70 plus mph.

I should have said, get a bike that you can run on the interstate and will be able to pace with the other riders you intend on riding with.

SV650 is a great bike. It takes a young man to ride one of those with the clip on bars! Lol.

[megaspaz]

Sssshhhh! Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not that young…

After starting on an sv650s, yup, you’re right. It is a great bike.

—
If there’s anything more important than my ego
around, I want it caught and shot now…

[rt]

By Harley Davidson’s definition, the SPORTster is not a cruiser.
I edited that wink, lol.
Probably could have been less dogmatic.
It’s HD’s sport bike. I’ve thought most people considered it a “road bike” or a sport standard and not a cruiser.
Has HD ever put the word “cruiser” into any Sportster marketing?
(Now that I think of it, maybe back in the 90’s they had a Sportser model with the word “Cruiser” in it’s model name?)

It handles better than a cruiser through the twisties and it’s tall with a “standard” like foot peg placement.
Doesn’t entertain the forward controls or floor boards of a cruiser.
Gearing is un-cruiser like.
It’s got a taller seat height than any cruiser.
Heck, Buell used the 1200 engine in their’ sport bikes for years.
Evil jumped busses on the damn thing. Try that with a Suzuki C50. Lol!

[Rab]

The sportster is IMO, not a cruiser or a sport-bike (although it used to be/still is? used for flat-track racing).

Like a Triumph Bonneville, it’s just “a motorcycle” or to use an anachronistic title, a “roadster” (which they now call a “standard”). The terms cruiser (in this sense) and sport-bike, didn’t, I think, exist back in 1957 when the original was designed.

I tend to think of cruisers as having your feet out in front of you, the sportster has them mostly underneath you I believe (yes, know, that’s just one thing).

[Amoryl]

all of this sorta exemplifies the problem with labels. there’s sites where they label everything either sport or cruiser. sites that label sports cruiser and naked/standard, but they usually then define standards as mostly naked sports bikes, or the old CHP type bikes. another site puts naked/standards in the cruiser catagory. add to it that triumph now has an old styled naked/standard bike that harkens back to the good old days.

personally to me, the sportster looks more like a cruiser than any other style of bike on the current market. and maybe it’d look more like a standard if there were more standards being made today. but then I guess it doesn’t really matter a whole lot either way. some can call it a cruiser, others call it a standard or whatever, the truth is likely somewhere in between.

[Author]

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