It's fitting that Harley-Davidson held a secret screening of its 2025 CVO Road Glide RR—that's Race Replica, for you playing at home—in Austin, Texas. I was ostensibly in town to see what the new Softails were all about. But Circuit of the Americas is just down the street, and at last year's round of MotoGP held at the venue, the King of the Baggers race was one I'll never forget.
The sound of fat-ass V-twins roaring down the main straight at COTA and then immediately diving headfirst into turn 1 with the American flag waving in the wind is a sight that tends to stick with you. As do seeing pint-sized motorcycle racers coerce the 700-pound race machines around a track where their lithe 300-pound cousins screamed only moments before.
And I distinctly remember me wondering aloud if Harley would ever be brave enough to sell one of these motorcycles to the average Joe? You know, something that takes the race bikes and adds a number plate to the back of them. Wouldn't that be rad as hell?
Fast forward a year and I have my answer. The company isn't. But Harley is giving us something that's 90% of the race bike, the biggest motor in the Motor Co.'s history, and one of the steepest price tags of a motorcycle I've seen from a big-name manufacturer in recent memory.
It's also cool as fuck, which is exactly what Harley needs right now.
When I tell you I was gobsmacked listening to Kyle Wyman talk us through this bike in Austin, I want you to feel the weight of that statement. It felt as if the list of things that was pulled directly from the race bike was never-ending. He just kept going on and on and I was like, "Are they just going to sell the race bikes en masse?"
Harley isn't, but it got damn-near close. And you can't talk about this bike without starting with its massive engine.
So Harley has, for ever, not gone the way of CCs to denote the brand's engine capacity. Instead, the Motor Co. went with cubic inches just like a muscle car. And the CVO Road Glide RR is no different, with its 131 cubic-inch Screamin’ Eagle motor. Converted to what every other motorcycle manufacturer states, that's a whopping 2.147-liters or 2,147ccs. And all that displacement adds up to 153 horsepower and 150 pound-feet of torque. Dear lord.
All that means is this is the most powerful Harley-Davidson engine ever offered from the factory.
That's all done by way of a litany of off-the-shelf go-fast products Harley offers to its customers, bespoke parts designed, engineered, and manufactured by the brand's King of the Baggers team, and some custom tuning of the whole package. There's new camshafts, a liquid-cooled head, fully CNC machined combustion chambers and ports, a race-inspired intake and 68mm throttle body with a matching aluminum intake manifold, billet just about everything, and a smaller sprocket for better off-the-line acceleration.
Even the redline was changed to offer more performance, with the CVO Road Glide RR allowed to breathe to 6,500 rpm. That might not sound like a lot to sport bike or adventure riders, but that's screamin' for a Harley-Davidson. See what I did there? There's also a full titanium Akrapovic exhaust, because why not? According to Harley, it's also 50-state legal. Imagine lane-splitting with this.
Every ounce of power and torque is then sent through a brand-new Screamin' Eagle Racing King 6-speed transmission that was literally pulled from the race team's motorcycles. And then there's the suspension.
Folks, when I saw the rear Ohlins sticking out from the bags when Wyman pulled the covers off this bike, I nearly did a spit take. Ohlins are at the rear and front, both of which are fully adjustable. According to the brand, the front suspension are 43mm Ohlins FGR 253 Hypersport Superbike forks that the brand built in conjunction with the suspension company, and trail down to Brembo GP4-RX 2-piece, 4-piston calipers.
The rear suspension run those dope-ass dual outboard Ohlins remote reservoirs you see on the race bike, and are also fully adjustable trailing to a fully CNC'd billet swingarm—that I'm going to get more in depth with in a future story—and lead to a single four-piston Brembo caliper.
Each and every bolt on the bike is CNC'd, too. Everything else, seemingly, is carbon fiber.
You know that TikTok meme? The carbon fiber one where the person doing the voiceover points to things and just says "carbon fiber" but loses their mind as they point to each new carbon fiber part? That's how I felt when Wyman went through the bike's carbon bits. The fairing? Fully carbon fiber. The bags? carbon fiber. The mud guards? Carbon fiber. Even the seat base is carbon fiber. All that carbon, however, ain't there just to connect with the youths and their memes, though.
Thanks to Harley's light-weighting, both in its billet aluminum carbon fiber parts, the CVO Road Glide RR is a 50 pounds lighter compared to the regular CVO Road Glide. 50 freakin' pounds. Now think back to the engine specs of 153 horsepower and 150 pound-feet of torque. Yeah, this thing is going to be a monster.
The only real difference between this bike and the King of the Baggers race bikes is that this still has mid-forward controls, road-legal lights and exhaust, and a bangin' stereo system from Rockford Fosgate. It's also slightly shorter than the race bike, though it's still two inches taller than the standard CVO Road Glide, and has a lean angle of 36 degrees right, while 35 degrees left. During Wyman's talk, the team's James Rispoli was said to have already gotten to play with the prototype and found the lean angle's limits.
He also said it was so damn close to his race bike, he couldn't believe it. It even has a King of the Baggers pommel ahead of the seat.
There's about a million other little things that I've either missed or glossed over—there are six different ride modes and a host of safety features to keep you rubber side down—but I could theoretically write a book about this sole motorcycle. Yet, I haven't told you how much it is or if you could even get one. So let's discuss the elephant in the room.
Harley-Davidson is going to ask $110,000 per 2025 CVO Road Glide RR, making it one of the most expensive Harleys ever conceived. It's also going to be extremely limited, with the Motor Co. building only 131 examples. First dibs will be had by the highest performing dealerships around the country—this model is US-only—as they have first right of refusal. After that, it's a lottery with customers applying for the privilege of ownership.
And while some'd balk at the sum, as well as the limited nature of production—many of which likely pointing to my own prior coverage on the company—I actually don't think Harley is out of line with either figure.
Harley-Davidson is at a crossroads. Its traditional customer base is, well, dying. But King of the Baggers has brought in new blood. It's must-see racing. And it's invigorated the brand's excitement for life like it hasn't witnessed in decades. There's still a long way to go, but this type of motorcycle is the exact sort of "We're not going to keep doing the same-old, same-old" is exactly the type of hype maker the brand needs to capture folks' imagination and get them back into dealerships.
Will it be the end-all, be-all? No. But it's a massive step in the right direction.
