If you're a motorcyclist who enjoys the vicarious thrills and spills of bike ownership and you're wealthy you might buy a Harley-Davidson. If you're wealthy and have avoided cocaine, which is God's way of saying you earn too much, you might buy a Harley Heritage. But if you're wealthy, have your nasal passages intact, and find run of the mill Harley ownership a chore you might buy a Harley Springer.

It's rare that a motorcycle parked up outside the office attracts so much attention from the passing hawkers, tinkers and door to door salesmen that populate the
backstreets of Acton. Even parked in the back of the pick-up, which some might cruelly suggest is the best place for the Springer, people still gawped. It's one of the world's strange facts that Harley-Davidsons, from the littlest Sportster to the largest Glide, are the most attractive motorcyles to non-motorcyclists. And wherever the Springer was parked people would stop and stare. I could have been riding Schwantz's championship-winning Suzuki and no one would have paid a blind bit of notice. There's nowt so queer as folk but I did find the attention a touch disconcerting.
While at first the rider basks in the attention that being a Harley owner confers. After a week or so of living with the Springer it all became something of a chore. I mean just how crisp do your 501 's have to be, and what does a chap do when it's too dark to wear the obligatory sunglasses? The answer to this is, that after a week of ownership you just don't care. And this is where the fun starts.

Some people might enjoy flaunting their*' wealth in these recessionary times, sticking! two fingers up at the dole queue on the one' hand and flicking an imaginary digit at the J chancellor on the other while wearing their I immaculate outfits on their incandescent I steeds. But more fun is to be had if you look I too filthy to even be a roadie for Nirvana. A | perverse reversal of the straight-from-the-catalogue look it may be, but you can't help I but feel that, no matter how good you looJ<,[ you're always second billing to the show-stopping bike. Image is, as ever, biggest! selling point for Harley-Davidson, and it's 1 Springer Softail has no difficulty waving the| banner aloft. Mainly because of it's ultra-retro front end.
In the days before telescopic front forks,! springer front ends were in the vanguard of I suspension development. I'd hate to have I ridden what went before, as the few inches I of travel available on this example were I used up on hitting the smallest of bumps I leaving nothing more if the single piston! caliper was applied with even a modicum of lever pressure. But carping about the front end is pointless. What you're buying here, more than with any other Harley, is the look and the appearance that says I don't care about function, form's for me and I've got the wedge to prove it.
At the heart of the Springer lies the trademark 45-degree V-twin 1340 evo motor. It looks as though it should uproot small tower blocks but flatters to deceive in appearance and initial riding impressions.

Turn the chunky ignition switch mounted centrally in the twin-filler tank, thumb the starter and the Springer whispers into life. Legislation has all but throttled the cobby Vee and instead of the unmistakable offbeat fortissimo that the package demands the well-baffled pipes can only whisper Harley's original score.
But if the bureaucrats have silenced the engine at least they haven't been able to dilute the radical riding position. Swing a leg over the Springer and you'll sink into a seat only 26 inches above the tarmac. Stretch your left leg out to the highway peg, pull in the weighty clutch and tap in first gear. Slip the clutch and on a whiff of throttle  the Harley's wash of torque will whisk you down the road. Keeping things smooth and slow, progress up and down through the agricultural 'box is still something of an effort. If any bike was designed to be ridden no faster than the double-nickle 55mph ruthlessly enforced on America's noads and to spend most of it's life being admired at a standstill then this is it.