Harley-Davidson V-Rod Muscle

Launched in 2009 as a riposte to machines like Yamaha’s re-born VMAX, the V-Rod Muscle was essentially a styling exercise built upon an engine and chassis based on those of the 2001 V-Rod, the wild looking liquid cooled 60° V-twin power cruiser with which Harley proved their head wasn't quite as firmly stuck in the 1950s as we’d originally feared. Fast, smooth, well-braked and pretty, the V-Rod was like no Milwaukee machine before it, but its all-important styling was arguably a touch effeminate, a charge Harley’s designers subsequently tried to counter with the noir Night Rod Special and this, the beefy Muscle. Engine capacity went up from 1130cc to 1250cc, in came styling inspired by stealth warplanes and on went the kind of detailing that suggests a project manager with a knack for getting what he wants, regardless of cost: stuff like the LED rear light (a single curved red strip under the lip of the rear mudguard), exhausts like industrial ducting and indicators embedded in the elegant mirror stems.

Just as the V-Rod surprised all who rode it, so the Muscle makes much of an unlikely recipe. All it takes is a movement. At a standstill or heaven forbid being manoeuvered around with the engine off, the 307kg V-Rod Muscle is painfully clumsy. You climb aboard, spend ten minutes trying to find the forward-set pegs with your feet, wrestle the thing up off its stand and wonder what in God’s name you’ve got yourself into. The ’bars pull your upper body forward over the ‘fuel tank’ (the unleaded actually lives under the seat). The fiendish indicator set-up (thumb-operated button on the left ’bar for left; ditto on the right to turn right; push again or wait to cancel…) befuddles and the needlessly chunky brake and clutch levers feel odd. So you wobble off up the road mentally conjuring the shortest possible route back to a destination at which you can park the Muscle and reasonably abandon it. Forever.

Only the bike soon begins to make a curious kind of sense. With just 15 mph on the speedo low-speed ungainliness evaporates. With its weight carried low in a nicely rigid frame, the Muscle feels nicely balanced around town. At these speeds the ride quality is positively refined (the one advantage of all that weight) and, with plenty of steering lock, the Muscle is an unlikely U-turn master.

Power out of town and you can’t help but marvel at the engine’s impeccable manners. It is béchamel smooth and creamy, the fuel injection accurate and jerk-free and the thing just seems to rev endlessly. The transmission may only boast five ratios but quite honestly the engine could get away with three. Fifth is almost an overdrive, fourth is effectively top on interesting roads and third can do the lot, from 50mph at 4000 rpm to 115 mph at the 9000 rpm limiter. The clutch is light yet reassuringly meaty, the ABS-equipped brakes strong and the steering, though slow, remarkably accurate.

And so you cover a few miles, doing this cruising thing 70 mph, fourth and fifth gear with the slightly heavy-handed but very accurate gearbox (it never misses a shift and always give you neutral), swinging through bends, the heels of your boots occasionally scuffing the road in the tighter stuff. And you know what? It feels good.

Sooner or later though you grow curious about what the Muscle can do if you get a little giddy. So you roll to a halt on a deserted stretch of road and inexplicably dial up 7000 rpm before dumping the clutch in first gear. The Muscle obliges by spinning the rear Michelin into a smokey ball and, as you come off the brakes, uses the warm sticky steamroller of molten rubber to paint a 30ft python of black up the road. It launches flat and hard and is plainly at its happiest while suffering.

Laughing like a drain you ride first gear to the redline before doing the same in second, third and sorry mum fourth. An eighth of a mile passes in 7.5 seconds. Bored cows momentarily stop chewing. As a sequence of bends loom you decide to merely brush the brakes and simply launch the Harley in the general direction of the first apex. It’s slow to change direction, as you might expect, and the relatively crude suspension can’t deal with pronounced ripples in the tarmac, but there’s precious little drama as peg scuffs road and you wonder why you spent the last half an hour going so slowly.

So there you have it. Nearly six years old and still faintly ridiculous in dimensions, name and style. But the V-Rod Muscle makes a very twisted kind of sense when you decide to treat it like the weapon of amusement it is.