There are a couple people on this board able to run mid 10's on a 600. The R1 is a wheelie monster. You can't get ultra fast stock times out of it because it will flip itself.
As far as a crotch rocket that holds value like a Harley, try on a Ducati. Japanese bike that sounds better than any Harley ever built, called a V-Max. The Ducati also sounds way better than any Harley, but it's Italian.
PKRWUD the Harley has been a piece of **** for many years. I do see problems posted when Mustangs don't start, thing is, it's not ever since they were new that the problems existed, nor is it everytime. In the case of the older Harley's, it's not a part that's broken, it's the poor function of the parts to begin with. Even Harley realized they were building junk when they basically went under in the late 70's early 80's. You don't see any Japanese bikes around from the 1960's because they weren't built back then, but you see a TON of 70's bikes from Japanese manufacturers. Harley began a comeback where they redesigned their engines in the early 80's trying to actually build something reliable. I guess they couldn't figure out how to build quality and performance into a single engine, so they farmed their work out to the Germans. Who do you think designed the new Harley engines? It wasn't Harley. Porsche did 100% of the designing of those engines.
Then you want to talk about working on bikes. Well, guess you'd be attacking the newer cars there too? Not many home mechanics exist anymore and the Harley's are rolling into the shops just like everything else. From everything I've seen, all most sportbikes require is a tune up now and then for the 30,000 hard miles they get beat on. So what if they are hard to work on? You don't have to. Actually, I don't find them all that hard to work on anyway.
On the issue of becoming trendy to own a Harley, you are correct. The reason it's trendy is because of the past image of being a rebel.
As far as my age coming into it, I've never liked Harley's. Even when my older bro had his years and years ago. They are modifed to be obnoxiously loud, and they are the equivelent of a Caprice or something. Very little power (less than a stock 5.0HO per cube, that's just plain sick for a bike), heavy, and expensive. The Mustang I drive is much more closely related to a rocket. Smaller, faster, more performance oriented. How it gets there I don't care. Just that it is what I like. You may find some people "outgrow" rockets, but I think many more keep with them because of how much fun they are when ridden by non-psycho's.
If I was to buy a cruiser, and I wanted to remain in the US market, it would be a Polaris, hands down. They build their engines, just like for thier sleds, really American, not imported under the guise of it.
To each his own, but I'm a little ashamed of the fact we have no domestic performance motorcycles. The way our performance car market it going, perhaps in a few years there will be none of those either.
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