Ok so overall it looks pretty cool, well... yeah it looks god damn bad arse! Everyone wants to look at it, drool on it and they all seem a little, well scared of you… at least until the helmet comes off. When you are finished looking at it you have to get on, throw your leg over and fire it up... disappointment… I am not a fan of those noisy Harley’s that break windows with their exhaust blast just idling at traffic lights, still, go buy an aftermarket exhaust, the standard unit just kills too much of that Harley Music. Next, get it off the stand, I hope you have been doing lots of squats in the gym because you feel every one of the Muscle’s 670 odd pounds. Reverse it out of the garage and it is party time... well nearly... at low speed you really do notice the excessive weight, wide rear tyre and limited bar travel making manoeuvring awkward.

This bike however isn’t built for low speed manoeuvring, hit the highway and it comes into it’s own, with 122 HP it makes plenty of power for just about anyone, passing is a breeze regardless of revs or gear  selected. The V Rod Muscle really is exciting to ride, even coming from a sports bike background the power and acceleration is no let down. Now I said this was a “Sporty Harley” and it is… kinda. There is a strange riding position that is half cruiser, half sports bike… It doesn’t work, I am tall at 6’3” and the lean for the bars was still uncomfortable. Here’s a suggestion guys, if you want a rider to lean over the tank to get the weight forward a bit, do us a favour and move the foot pegs back, 6inches would probably do. That however is impossible due to the position of the exhaust, I will come back to the exhaust shortly. The one thing (to me at least) that makes a bike sporty is it’s cornering ability. I had my doubts about the Muscle but was pleasantly surprised. When I got used to it I found that with some muscle (pun intended) the V Rod was actually pretty good fun to wrestle through the twisty stuff. Cornering could be achieved at a (relatively) brisk pace, especially if you moved off the seat a bit so you could keep the pegs and your boots off the tarmac (note to self... buy new boots).

Cornering is still not blistering as the wide tyre and heavy bike make direction changes a bit more sluggish than would be ideal. Another relatively vital feature of sporty riding is being able to stop, preferably in a hurry. With the amount of weight being propelled at high speed you would expect the Harley to need anchors like those that adorned the bow of the HMS Titanic and you get something pretty damn close. The review bike was fitted with the optional ABS, along with the twin disc front and rear stoppers do an admirable job of slowing the behemoth down, you do need to put some power through the lever though, and during ABS assisted stops the bike did feel like it was going to shake itself to pieces which I can live with as getting a bit rattled is much better than being scraped of a Semi, still after the refined ABS of the likes of Honda it was a bit of a surprise.