Factfile
Engine: air-cooled twin-cam fuel-injected 1584cc in-line V-twin producing 120Nm of torque at 3300rpm
Wheels and tyres: wheels 17” mirror polished chrome-plated bullet hole aluminium, tyres 140/75R17 67V front, 200/55R17 78V rear
Brakes: four-piston front, two-piston rear
Dimensions: Length 2396mm, seat height 645mm, ground clearance 130mm, wheelbase 1635mm, fuel capacity 18.9 litres, dry weight 313kg
Price: €20,940 – Dublin Harley-Davidson, 01-464 2211, dublinharley-davidson.com
Test bike, £13,210, Provincewide Harley-Davidson, Antrim, 028-9446 6999, provincewide.com
WAY BACK when God’s dog was only a pup, the newspaper I worked for in Belfast sent me to a paper in Canada for a three-month exchange.
It was a uniquely Irish exchange scheme, in that I went over there but nobody came back, and I was walking down the street one day trying to figure that out when I found myself by chance outside the local Harley dealership.
I spent a happy hour of lottery dreaming inside and, when I mentioned it to one of the photographers on the paper, he leaned back in his chair, looked over and said: “Cool. Did you see the fat boy?”
“Well, there was one guy behind the counter, but he looked in pretty good shape to me,” I said, all youthful innocence.
He looked at me as if I was an idiot – which, in the circumstances, was a fair assessment.
“The Fat Boy is a motorcycle, man,” he said.
Indeed it was, and whatever you might think of the dubious machismo of calling a motorcycle a Softail Fat Boy, it shot to fame soon after being Arnie’s mount of choice in the Terminator movies.
Despite the fact that ever since it’s been difficult to ride without hauling out a shotgun and blasting passing Volvos off the road – not necessarily a bad thing – the Fat Boy has become one of the most iconic symbols of Harleyness, up there with the Road King and the V-Rod.
The reason is fairly simple: along with the rest of the Softail and Dyna range, it’s a motorbike distilled to its purest form. If you asked a five year old to draw a motorbike, the Fat Boy is what you’d get, right down to the solid wheels, chunky forks and matching tank.
Harley, taking the sensible view that you don’t mess with a good thing, kept changes minimal, in 2004 and 2005 slotting in a fuel-injected 1449cc motor and 13 colours, and introducing a 1550cc Anniversary model.
The 2009 reincarnation takes the view that, in a credit crunch, when everyone else is abandoning bling for hairshirts, what the world of motorcycling needs is more chrome.
I mean, we’re talking chrome solid alloy wheels, oil tank and lines, headlamp, riser and internally wired handlebars.
So if you see a Harley rider on a Fat Boy wearing shades, he’s not posing; he’s trying to avoid imminent blindness.
Other than cosmetic changes, Harley has sensibly retained the characteristics that made the Fat Boy a favourite: so much low-down grunt you can happily potter along at 40mph in sixth if you want, yet enough oomph to make overtaking effortless.
The clutch, a far cry from the clunky agricultural Harley contraptions of old, is silky enough to make low-speed manoeuvres a doddle, even on a bike weighing in at 313kg.
It is, of course, not a point-and-shoot machine, but even with fuel stored in the tank rather than the frame, the centre of gravity is so low that you can have endless hours of fun swinging it through roundabouts and tight corners and seeing how long you can keep the footboards caressing the road.
The only complaint, in fact, is that a couple of hours at high speeds can leave you a little windblown and tired, as I found after taking it from Belfast down to the bike show in Dublin and back.
But then, this is a bike for a sunny day and a curvy A-road, not motorway cruising. And besides, an occasional high-speed blast will do wonders for your six-pack, to the extent that no one will call you a softail fat boy and get away with it.