HARLEY-DAVIDSON SOFTAIL CVO CONVERTIBLE (2010 - 2012) Review

A bike for the kind of people who want to customise their Harley but want someone to do all the thinking and work for them.

• Related: 2020-on Harley-Davidson Softail review

Ride it down any street and you can see people’s heads turning and mouthing the word Harley as you chug past, legs wide astride, hunkered down low in the custom seat watching passers by look at their own reflections as it rolls past. If you’re shy, this isn’t the bike for you.

It’s a massive hunk of metal and where some Japanese cruisers are kitted out with plated plastic, the incredible 340kg dry weight of this bike gives a real sense of owning the road. It’s incredibly heavy to move around out of the garage but get it going and the low-slung weight makes you feel like you’re ploughing through the road, and riding some real American Iron with a comfortable seat and a 180-mile tank range.
And once on the move it’s very easy to manoeuvre, but just watch the footboards as they will touch down leaving the car park at work.

Our particular test bike suffered from a fuelling problem unfortunately, though we know of other bikes without problems. On our test bike just where you want the power, winding it on gently at 2000rpm, feeling it potato-potato and vibrate gently the bike then sinks into a torque and power black hole. On a dyno the power curve would look like a rollercoaster. The power dips, like it can’t breath properly and then comes back again at 3200rpm. When it comes in the delivery is noticeably stronger than the standard bike, revs harder and faster, but then it’s all over by 5500rpm.

There’s so few of these big-bore CVO bikes on the road that there’s no reported problems, and as we said, this bike had a unique problem with its power delivery, some time in the workshop would sort that out we’re in no doubt of that.

It’s £23,490. So whether or not that’s value depends on if you have £24,000 to spend on a motorcycle, we don’t, but if you want something truly unique then this certainly is special. With resale values of Harleys so high and this bike being so rare you’re unlikely to lose much money on it in the first couple of years of ownership. Find a Harley-Davidson Softail for sale.

In Harley’s world Convertible means you can have a full dress tourer and ten minutes later whip off the screen, leather saddlebags and pillion seat and have an aggressive looking cruiser for town posing.
As well as those removable parts there’s also lashings of chrome, retro style full-wrap mudguards, custom style chrome ‘Stinger’ wheels, a 200-section rear tyre, a digital speedo and analogue tacho using the trademark CVO aluminium background, special custom paint that’s hand-painted at factory. Compare and buy parts for the Harley in the MCN Shop.