What actually makes the Harley-Davidson Road Glide stand out from its electric “brother” the Electra Glide is its classic front fairing. As we know, the Electra’s fairing comes with a built-in headlight on the outside as well as a dashboard with multimedia on the inside, rigidly fixed to the bike’s fork and turning with it.
On the contrary, the Road Glide shows the opposite. Here the fairing is fixed on the motorcycle’s frame, and the fork with the front wheel turns inside of it. In this case, the fairing, with the dashboard, built-in lighting equipment, speakers of the audio system doesn’t move relative to the motorcycle. Only a speedometer and tachometer can be found on the handlebar. Well, it feels like the slightly updated cockpit architecture doesn’t justify the appearance of a new version. Indeed, the difference between them is really enormous.
Now let’s consider the outcome of such a rigidly fixed fairing of the Harley-Davidson bike. First, here we observe the constant aerodynamic pattern. Well, the changes in the airflow when turning the handlebar are minimal. However, in the rainy weather, they will come into effect. Here, sitting behind a rigidly mounted fairing, you don’t have to worry that every turn will bring a huge batch of water poured on you. In addition, the area of the fairing of the Road Glide bike is somewhat larger than that of the flagship that naturally results in better protection against adversity.
The Harley-Davidson Road Glide motorcycle comes with a Boom Box system featuring a 6.5-inch touchscreen, an MP3 player with USB, radio, Bluetooth, navigation as well as other worthy things. The Boom Box system boasts four speakers. The two of them are located in the front and the rest is built into the passenger seat. By the way, the passenger has a possibility to adjust the volume of the stereo system. What’s more, the system perfectly works at almost any speed. It can’t be said about the cutting-edge BMW K1600GTL. When driving this bike, you can hardly listen to music at 120-130 km/h, but it’s real when dealing with the Harley-Davidson Road Glide motorcycle.
Well, compared to the BMW K1600GTL and the Honda Gold Wing, the new US bike can’t boast the impressive top speed. Its V-shaped Twin Cam 103 low-powered motor demonstrates only 87 hp. However, it’s enough for the heavy Harley-Davidson Road Glide motorcycle to speed up briskly to 100 km/h and then gradually reach the cruising speed of 130-150 km/h. Of course, you can go faster but it doesn’t make sense for this bike. It’s because its advantages include the soft suspension, a convenient seat, and a sophisticated audio system you can enjoy all the time regardless of the weather conditions and your driving speed due to a well-thought-out fairing. To say the truth, with its six-cylinder powerplant, the Honda Gold Wing shows just a minor 30-km speed advantage over the Harley-Davidson Road Glide motorcycle but the level of comfort of the latter is overwhelming.
