Styling

THE radical styling of the bike was lead by a lot of inspiration from Europe. The bike that won best in show at Daytona bike week was actually from France and that made Harley really sit up and notice the custom bike inspiration coming from Europe.

It was designed by Louis Netz in conjunction with Willie G Davidson who originally hired him. Netz is Director of styling and has been with Harley-Davidson since 1974 through all the major changes in the firm’s history.

He’s a man who’s is very proud of what he’s achieved and is known by many in the company as a bit of an old hippy. He said: I could design appliances but taking home a new iron isn’t like riding home on a new Harley-Davidson. I can honestly say the last time we had such a big project was in 1951 with the K-model and I truly love this thing. We had to create new technologies for the styling to give this new platform and I think if people had any doubts about our abilities, this bike should kick those doubts and let us develop both our air-cooled bikes forever.

” We started with the idea to build a hot-rod inspired performance custom with lots of inspiration from the drag strip where Harley has been very successful. The engine, descended from the VR1000 meant we had to make the frame fit tight around the engine and make the frame a styling point of the bike instead of hiding the frame.

We needed it to be a long, low bike with a strong identity so you know you’ve seen a V-Rod. Something that’s getting harder to do each year, but even when the bike was in matt black in the spy pictures in MCN, you knew it was something different. ”

” Willie G was heavily involved in the bike and from the beginning he wanted aluminium which is very difficult to work with compared to steel. The engineering department were reluctant to use aluminium so Willie e-mailed them the word ALUMINIUM every day for three weeks until they agreed. ”

” Even with things like the curved exhausts meant we had to develop new processes to make them which is pretty cool. And with the radiator we didn’t want a big black box like our competitors so we spent a long time making it suite the style of the bike. Like the wheels, we felt in the custom world there were too many scoops and blades around so we went for a simple look. ”

The styling team of two people spent 18 months just working exclusively on the V-Rod’s styling and Hraley claims that’s one of the keys to the bikes look. Netz said: ” There’s no romantic story about designing the bike on a napkin. It’s down to hard work and a very full garbage can. We dedicated a 400 square foot room and blocked off the walls to work in secret and filled the walls with pictures of every competitive product plus 100s of our own drawings. And though we used some very advanced design packages, nothing will ever replaces pencil, paper and markers. ”

One thing that is as important as the sketches are clay models. The team went through hundreds of different styles in the studio. Some with milled aluminium parts and some with just clay before they got it right, sometimes the bikes came apart and were mocked back up again as much as ten times a week.

Netz said: ” Some parts were easy and some were hard. But as Willie said, this was a defining moment and I count it as a pinnacle in my career. And I think it works better than it looks and does great burnouts! ”