Dream Bike: Harley XR1000

I liked that Dream Bike piece Gresh did over the weekend about his fantasy bike, the Kawasaki 350cc Avenger.  I like the concept: Articles on the ones that got away.

And as is always the case, if Gresh wrote it, I like it.

Can I say that on this blog?  You know, Gresh and I do most of the writing, so am I allowed to say that about his stuff?  Hey, I don’t care.

I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you have a dream bike.   You know, one you didn’t buy but wish you had.   We’d like to hear about it.   Do a short piece on it with a photo or two and we’ll publish it here.

In the meantime, and because I like “the one that got away” concept so much, I’m going to do a short bit on my dream bike. One of them, anyway. It’s the 1983 Harley XR1000. Yeah, I know, I’m a guy who made his bones writing about small bikes (the CSC RX3, in particular), and the XR1000 is anything but small. But I like it.

The magazines of the era all panned the XR1000, and every once in a while one of them does a retrospective (and they still don’t like it). You know what? I don’t give a rat’s rear end about some magazine weenie’s opinion. I like the look, the concept, and the sound of the XR1000, and one of my few regrets in life is that I didn’t buy one new in ’83.

Not that I didn’t have good reason back then. I had bought a Harley Electra-Glide Classic, new, in 1979. It was the worst vehicle of any type I’d ever owned, and I swore I’d never buy another Harley. That was the principal thing that kept me from pulling the trigger on a new XR1000 in ’83 (I sold the Electra-Glide in ‘82, and the reliability reputation injuries it left hadn’t healed yet). But time heals all wounds (I wish I had that Electra-Glide now), and if I could find a clean XR1000 I’d be on it in a New York minute.

The magazines said the XR1000 vibrated (they actually paid folks to point that out on a Harley?), you could burn your left leg on the exhaust (duh), and the twin Dellortos hit your knee on the right side of the bike (seriously?). Not content with stating the obvious, one of the magazines actually wrote the bike had a predilection for turning left. A bike based on a flat tracker? A predilection for turning left? And folks wonder why the motorcycle magazine business fell on hard times.

Everything the magazines hated about the XR1000 made me want one more. It was a raw, muscular, asymmetric, no passenger, no compromises, in-your-face motorcycle. I still want one.

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We spend a lot of time dreaming about motorcycles.   See our other Dream Bikes here!