Everyone’s got a nugget of Harley in them. Whether it was formed by watching Evel Knievel jump busses or Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper tripping across America, or engrained by countless other movie and TV show references, Harley is woven into the fabric of motorcycling in a way most other manufacturers dream of. It’s attached to the idea of the American Dream, and embedded with the origins of motorcycling as an escape from conformity and as counter-culture rebellion (which are things we’d do well to remember next time we criticise young people for having fun on bikes). And yet within motorcycling – certainly in the UK – Harley is a sub-culture with its own language, logic and even units of measurement. I mean, who measures engine capacity in cubic inches?
Part of Harley’s brand has long been building big, comfy, fully-equipped grand tourers – from the Hydra Glide in 1949, through Electra Glide in the 60s, to the Road King and Road Glide in the 90s, and the Street Glide in the 00s. And for 2024, Harley have updated their Street Glide and Road Glide designs, last properly revamped seven years ago, in 2017.
For those not au fait with the difference between the two bikes (what do you mean, you aren’t familiar with the complexities of Harley’s naming conventions?), the Road and Street Glide share the same basic engine and chassis platforms, but differ in bodywork – the Street Glide has the ‘Batwing’ top fairing, mounted to the handlebars, the Road Glide has the Futurama-styled ‘Shark’ fairing mounted to the frame – and riding position – the Street Glide has conventionally placed flat bars and the Road Glide has higher, more laid-back quasi-ape-hanger bars. Both bikes feature footboards and a feet-forward leg position. Because of the fairing designs, storage options are slightly different inside each fairing.
Last year’s CVO versions of the Street and Road Glides presaged these new ‘standard’ versions: the usual ‘Custom Vehicle Operations’ ingredients included a larger motor (with variable valve timing), up-spec suspension, flash paintwork and a bottomless list of accessories – not to mention vast price tags – but underneath all the glitz they featured completely new bodywork with an up-to-date style that was always certain to filter down to more prosaic models.
Now that’s exactly what’s happened with the new 2024 Street Glide and Road Glide, which take the new bodywork that debuted on those CVO offerings and add it to the full-production machines. Allied to a revised engine, reduced weight and updated technology the 2024 bikes promise to be a substantial step forward.
Pros & Cons
Reworked styling gives a modern take on two classic machines
Improved tech including vast 12.3 inch touchscreen dash
Big increase in performance
They’re cheaper than their 2023 equivalents
The standard models don’t get the CVO bikes’ upside-down forks and radial brakes
Dynamically, both bikes are still rudimentary compared to German and Japanese luxury tourers
At this price the Glides should come with more base trim: no heated grips, no quickshifter, no adjustable screen options
Harley-Davidson Street Glide and Road Glide (2024) REVIEWED
Full road test of Harley-Davidson’s Street Glide and Road Glide – the production models based on the CVO version from 2023
Same three colours for the Road Glide and Street Glide (Road Glide has the larger headlight and bulkier fairing)
Price is relative; the 2024 Street Glide starts at £26,795, and the Road Glide is £500 more at £27,295 – which is anything but cheap. But in the context of last year’s prices, the updated bikes are £1000 and £500 cheaper respectively. They’re also considerably less expensive than the 2023 CVO models they’re styled on (which start at £38,295 for the CVO Street Glide and £38,795 for the CVO Road Glide).
There’s also a caveat; those base prices are for grey coloured bikes with chrome engine and component finish. Anything with a colour is an extra £500, and black engine trim is another £1800.
Available colours (both bikes) are:
Billiard Gray (standard colour), Blue Burst, Vivid Black, Whiskey Fire, White Onyx Pearl, Alpine Green (chrome finish only), Atlas Silver Metallic (black finish only) or Sharkskin Blue (black finish only).
Harley says in the UK the Street Glide outsells the Road Glide by around two to one.
New styling aside, the big talking point of last year’s CVO Road Glide and CVO Street Glide was the new 121 cubic inch (1977cc), 121bhp Milwaukee-Eight V-twin, which debuted variable valve timing for the first time on a pushrod Harley motor.
But the new standard Road Glide and Street Glide don’t get that powerplant. Instead, they come with an evolution of the 45° eight-valve, pushrod, 117 cubic inch Milwaukee-Eight – 1923cc to everyone else – that was first seen on the 2023 Breakout cruiser.
In terms of actual performance... well, it depends which dyno test standard Harley want to quote. Harley’s press site says 130 lb.ft/176Nm at 3250rpm and 105hp/78kW at 4600rpm tested to J1349 (an American dyno test standard). The UK Harley site quotes 129 lb.ft/175Nm at 3500rpm and 107hp/80kW at 5020rpm, tested to EC134/2014 (a European standard). It’s not a huge difference, but manufacturers usually quote one number and stick to it! Let’s go in between, and say 106bhp?
But even if it’s not the full-fat CVO engine (which would be odd because the whole point of a CVO is to be top of the range), it’s considerably more potent than its 2018 predecessor, the 107ci, 1746cc motor making 88bhp and 111 lb.ft (although as far as I can figure out, by 2020 there was no ‘standard’ Glide as such; it had become the Glide Special, with a 114ci, 1868cc motor, still making 88bhp but now making 120 lb.ft, then a claimed 118 lb.ft in 2021, then a claimed 122 lb.ft last year, and 94bhp. Are you keeping up?).
Either way, point is the new engine is beefier than anything the Glides have had before, CVOs excepted.
Updates for 2024 include reshaped combustion chambers and increased compression ratio, with oval intake ports increasing air velocity and adding more swirl to the mixture, breathing through a larger, repositioned central throttle body. So, Harley are eking out a bit more performance with more efficient breathing. Better breathing seems to be the engine development of choice in 2024.
The Road Glide and Street Glide also have a revised cooling system similar to last year’s CVO models, with routing that cools the rear cylinder headfirst rather than both at the same time. Harley are still keen to stress this is not a full water jacket – it’s primarily to cool the area around the exhaust valves – so air-cooled-only purists are kept happy. For 2024 the cooling fan is redirected to reduce heat hitting the rider.
The Glides run a 6-axis IMU, with selectable riding modes – Road, Sport, Rain and Custom – with the option to tailor throttle response, engine braking, traction control to your own taste.
On the road
Harleys are all about big torque from big cc, delivered with an unmistakably on-brand lumpy throb. And that’s what you get here with both the Road and Street Glide. From a shuddering cough when the motor first fires up that shakes the whole bike and rider into life, then settling into that famous staccato, off-beat tick over, clunking into first gear via a gear lever set so high you almost have to lift your foot off the board to find it – you know you can only be on one make of bike (and the engine experience is identical between Road and Street Glide). Jump on the gas and first disappears so quickly – and smoothly – you’ll be into the 5500rpm redline and rev limiter before you have time to grab second. This is a Harley engine that likes to rev but is not allowed to rev out. The tacho goes all the way to 8000rpm – meaning 30% is beyond the redline. I always wonder why manufacturers bother to use tachos that have so much wasted tacho space, especially as they’re mostly just graphics these days, not actual numbers on dial. Maybe when you fit a hop-up kit, some of the red bit of the shading is removed.
With 106bhp on tap, the Glides are about as powerful as <chooses arbitrary reference point> an Africa Twin so in absolute terms neither is going to charge into the distance pulling like a proverbial – and you have to throw gears at the motor to pedal it apace past cars for instant overtakes (the top three ratios feel close together and the engine so smooth you can cruise for miles in fifth by mistake – I did). But the engine is an order of magnitude more powerful than its predecessor, and power delivery is significantly more refined – yes, the classic Harley chugability is present and correct, but bad manners are limited to a slightly snatchy throttle response in Sport mode (entirely absent in Road mode). It’s flexible too, pulling away in third gear and carrying top down to walking pace. Successive generations of Harley have been getting more civilised for a long time; the trick is to make them more usable without losing their character. So far, Harley are winning on that count.
Speaking of character, the Glides’ exhaust noise is a lot louder off the bikes than on them – passers-by are treated to the aural delights of a pair of 961.5cc pistons slugging away with surprising fruitiness. Excellent. The motor sounds louder than you’d think permissible, but a lot of manufacturers are sneakily finding ways of making their exhausts boomier in the last few years, so either they’re figuring out how to circumvent noise regs better or noise regs have been relaxed. Probably the former.
Street Glide cockpit and dash, Road Glide handlebar and seat
While the CVO models that introduced the new look last year had Showa USD forks and matching shocks, the standard 2024 Road Glide and Street Glide uses suspension that’s much more like their predecessors. The forks are right-way-up Showas while the twin Showa rear shocks give more travel than before at 76mm. The forks are unadjustable and the rear has a hand wheel for preload adjustment. Tip: you want it on max for cornering efficiency.
Brakes are another departure. Where the CVO bikes have 320mm discs and radial-mount Brembo four-pots, the standard 2024 Road Glide and Street Glide carry over the axial-mount, Harley-branded Brembos used on the earlier generation, with 300mm discs and cornering ABS.
The new bikes are substantially lighter than their predecessors, at 368kg for the Street Glide and 380kg for the Road Glide, both measured ready-to-ride including fuel. For comparison, the CVO Road Glide is 393kg and the CVO Street Glide is 380kg, both measured wet.
On the road
Both Street and Road Glides have distinct cruiser-based tourer handling. Pushing them around at standstill reveals their weight – for some reason best known to physics, long, low heavy tourers and cruisers are harder to keep upright than short, tall, heavy adventure bikes. It’s true of all bikes of this style, not just Harley. And at walking pace, when paddling about in traffic or just rolling back into a parking space, the Glides feel wide and cumbersome – again, more of a bike style quirk than specific to Harley.
But as soon as the Street and Road are rolling above a few mph, their mass disappears, and both have loads of bar leverage over their 19in front wheels to tiller around with relative ease. Of the pair, the Road Glide has slightly lighter steering thanks to the mass of the fairing relocated to the frame via some hefty ironmongery.
Ride the bikes at a decent pace on motorways and smooth A-roads, and you’re operating well within Harley’s design parameters – it’s home turf and everyone’s happy. This is the good stuff; tracing long, sweeping lines, arcing across legendary landscapes like a Marlboro advert and the stereo banging out a bit of Garth Brooks (which, to be fair, is the next right amount after ‘none’).
However, should you venture onto bumpy B-roads – of which there were many on the launch in the south of France – and, depending on your pace, shortcomings could become apparent. Increased wheel travel at the back is welcome, but it’s still a choppy ride over bumps at most speeds. True, impact edges are smoothed off over previous Harley iterations, so it takes a proper pothole to crash the suspension – you see one coming and brace – but the real tell is bumpy cornering. Get caught out piloting the Glide with too much enthusiasm the result is a tendency to oversteer and drift wide mid-corner. You can rescue a lot by riding the rear brake and steering, but only so much. And as soon as the bike starts to lean it reduces damping effectiveness because suspension is no longer acting at the same angle as bump force direction, so forces start to pass from tyre to frame with a predictable effect on tyre grip. The shorter the wheel travel and stiffer the damping, the more pronounced the effect. And the greater the lean angle, the less the ground clearance – run out of that and you quickly lift the bike off its tyres, with inevitable consequences.
But nobody scores points for over-riding a Harley – in fact the reverse is true; the real trick is riding it with a bit of vim and NOT decking it out or parking it in a hedge. But I was lucky enough to spend a week absolutely roasting a Honda Gold Wing around the Lakes, Pennines and Dales last summer, and then again across Southern Ireland – all VERY bumpy environments, during which the Wing was airborne more than once – and yet it never threatened to leave the tarmac permanently; its suspension control in extremis for such a monster of a bike was genuinely astonishing and made the Harley’s handling dynamic feel the equivalent of a mid-90s GL1500 – which wasn’t particularly bad; I’m just trying to put the bikes in context. Obviously, you don’t ride a Street or Road Glide expecting extreme handling chops; the point is you can on at least one of their rivals so it’s not an unrealistic expectation.
The Glides’ brakes are well up to the job of stopping the bike. The front comes with a span adjuster wheel, and the four-pot Harley-badged Brembos (axial, on 300mm discs) benefit from a cornering ABS system informed by a 6-axis IMU.
When we tested last year’s CVO Road Glide and Street Glide, we found them to be just as comfortable as you’d hope for such long-distance touring machines, and with essentially the same stance, seat shape and bar positioning the new full-production bikes are much the same in that respect. The 2024 Glides get the CVO fairing redesign, both the Street’s Batwing fairing and the Road Glide’s distinctive Shark fairing, with increased wind and weather protection.
The Street Glide and Road Glide differ most from the on-board perspective, with the Road Glide using a fixed-position fairing and much taller bars (now a wider, flatter bend and adjustable through 27° of tilt) while the Street Glide’s fairing is bar-mounted and the bars themselves are significantly lower. For both models, Harley claims that helmet buffeting at high speeds is reduced by 60% compared to their predecessors, despite relatively low, non-adjustable screens.
Both models use forward-mounted footboards and controls, so you’re not going to be cramped on either of them, while the seats are low enough for even the stubbiest of riders to be able to get their feet flat on the floor. For 2024, the seat gets reshaped and new padding to reduce back and neck fatigue.
The 2024 fuel tank is a new, longer, lower shape, but capacity remains at 22.7-litres with the ability to achieve 47mpg good for well over 200 miles between stops.
On the road
The fairings of both bikes are distinctive. Of the two, I much prefer the Road Glide’s Shark fairing both to use and look at – it’s wider, deeper and deflects more wind, doesn’t add weight to the steering and I love its slightly bonkers aesthetics. I also prefer the Road Glide’s riding position – it’s not as radical to use as it looks (it’s just as comfy as the flatter Street Glide bars) and, for me, dovetails more accurately with the ethos of the bike. It’s a big Harley ferchrissakes; sit me back in the seat and serve the controls up to me, please. Having said that, in the conservative UK market, I can totally believe the reason the Street outsells the Road is because buyers find the Road’s fairing design a step too challenging. ‘Fugly’ is a word that gets bandied about – but not by me.
Overall, both bikes encourage low, relaxed riding – feet-forward has never and will never make sense with an enthusiastic riding style. With feet and legs unable to resist acceleration, the forces are solely on arms, shoulders, neck and backside. So chill out and spud about instead – and for that, the Glides are ace. The seat feels deep but not too spongy, and the limiting factor to time on it is far more impacted by riding position rather than material or shape.
Harley says it’s put a lot of effort into reducing buffeting by 60% on the screens – short, stubby and non-adjustable (but with a pressure-relieving/temperature cooling vent just below them). It’s not a great success – there’s still plenty of wind noise and helmets still take a wobble. An adjustable screen that offered a range of settings would surely make sense on a bike costing as much as the Glides, and with ‘Touring’ in the name? A larger screen is available as a £238 accessory.
For 2024 the Glides get the 12.3in TFT dash from the 2023 CVOs – and it’s a good thing to look at, with a few graphic quirks. There are three different layouts – twin dials on the standard layout, tacho on the right and speedo on the left. For some reason the speed is presented twice – the speedo dial, then a big number in the middle. The display is clear and crisp.
The Sport screen is a single tacho dial with speed in the middle – either side is trip info and machine status, the other is various settings options. The final screen moves speed to the left with gear position and fuel status, does away with dials, and leaves the majority of the screen free to show the native sat nav, Bluetooth and multimedia settings or phone apps (per Apple Carplay – Android Auto is no longer supported by Android, so no fault of Harley but Samsung phone users are stuffed). For 2024 the stereo performance is now rated at 200w (not quite the 500w of the CVOs). All this is accessed by an army of buttons on both left and right bars.
On the road
Using all the Glide’s button in the right order is a learning curve which takes more than a few hours of a launch ride to understand. The important stuff to note is none of the switches are backlit and therefore a struggle to use at night, the indicators are still push to cancel (unless they’ve auto-cancelled which means you turn them on when you thought you were turning them off) and the Rider Mode button is on the right cluster, but is so far away from the grip you have to remove your hand to reach it. Cruise control is now standard, on the left bar, and easy to use. Other trim features include a pop-out drawer in the Street’s fairing for anything up to the size of a tablet, with the Road having two deep storage areas in each side of the fairing. None are lockable but both bikes have USB-C sockets. Luggage provision has also been improved in 2024, with more space in the panniers.
But there are some glaring omissions: no heated grips (either as standard or, as far as I can see, as an accessory), no heated seat (ditto), no quickshifter option (hard to imagine such a thing on the Glide’s transmission – but whatever, every other manufacturer now offers an option for seamless shifting; why shouldn’t Harley?).
There are a couple of finish issues too – overall, the deep, lustrous paint and visual finish on wheels and components is what you’d expect on £26k bike, but some bolt heads and the disc buttons look highly budget, and a pair of cheap hex bolt heads are clearly visible while riding, sticking proud from each side of a plastic top yoke shroud. The water-cooling filler and reservoir cylinder are strapped to the left frame downtube like an afterthought. The side stand doesn’t kick forward enough and is liable to fold back up.
One thing that Harley-Davidson has always excelled at is hogging – pun absolutely intended – its corner of the market, and for many riders it’s not a question of wanting a cruiser so much as a desire for a Harley. As such, the 2024 models’ biggest competition is likely to come from within the MoCo’s own range. However, if you can be tempted to consider other brands, these might be in the same ballpark…
For 2024, Harley’s Street and Road Glides are a big step forward from their predecessors in terms of looks, equipment, refinement and, to a lesser extent, comfort, performance, and handling. So, in isolation, it’s win-win whichever way you look at it. Especially when you consider they have all this and are cheaper than last year’s models (if you exclude the paint option costs). If you want the best touring Harley you can get, start here.
If you want the best cruiser-based tourer you can get – and it doesn’t have to be a Harley – options get interesting. The Wing, and bikes like BMW’s 2023 (now defunct) K1600 Bagger, will give you more performance, more tech, more practicality and better dynamics. But you know this already.
Harley are among a handful of manufacturers – like, for example, Moto Guzzi – that lean on image, lifestyle and character as much as factual, empirical, hard reality. For example, playing a game of ‘What would we say if Honda built’ – what would we say if Honda built the 2024 Sport or Road Glides? We’d think they’d gone completely mad.
Comparisons with rivals are almost pointless – who buys a Harley because it’s as good as another bike? No-one does – you buy it because of what it is, not what it isn’t. So that’s an easy choice for the converted. But everyone else: take a look at the attention to detail of a modern Triumph, or the tech on a BMW, or the trim and engineering chops of a Gold Wing before you do.
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Pushrod, four valves per cylinder, water cooled cylinder heads
Power
107hp at 5020rpm
Torque
129lb-ft at 3500rpm
Transmission
Six speed
Average fuel consumption
6l/100km (47mpg)
Tank size
22.7 litres
Max range to empty
235 miles
Rider aids
Four riding modes (five on CVO models), cornering traction control, cornering ABS, linked brakes, cornering engine braking control system, hill hold control, tyre pressure monitoring system
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A steering lock that meets the UNECE 62 standard
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