S12E05: Harley-Davidson Sportster History & Evolution

Zack Courts (0:00)

Welcome, everybody, to Highside, Lowside. My name's Zack, joined as always by my buddy, Spurge. This is season 12, episode five, and on today's pod, we're talking about another Moto icon. It's the Harley-Davidson Sportster. We'll be joined by JMP Cycle's Owen Patrick Garvin, everybody's favorite Harley dude, as far as I'm concerned. Also on the pod, following up on a claim that we made one year ago, a listener question about why transmissions are the way they are, and Spurge-O's crush on Dwight D. Eisenhower.

All of that and more, but first, a word from our sponsor.

Spurgeon Dunbar (0:32)

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Now on with the show.

Zack Courts (2:09)

Y'all ride everybody. Here we go. We are off on another Highside Lowside adventure. Spurgeon, I'm excited. I like this Icon Series thing that we do where we talk about important bikes. And honestly, it reminds me of school a little bit because I have to do a whole bunch of research and I was not good at school. But when I do research about motorcycles, I get excited and I want to talk about them. And I am excited to talk about the Harley Sportster. I know you love school because you used to be a teacher.

Spurgeon Dunbar (2:35)

These are my favorite episodes because of these are similarly my favorite episodes, but probably for a little bit of a different reason than you. I like the research and diving in and trying to learn something I didn't know before. I will say that we missed you on the last one. Aerie Henning did sub in for our GSXR 750 Icons episode.

Zack Courts (2:54)

I didn't get to say all the things I wanted to say about GSXRs, but fortunately most of the experiences-

Spurgeon Dunbar (2:59)

Well, you're not going to today as well, so you're going to have to talk about Harley Sportster today.

Zack Courts (3:03)

Yeah, well a couple of things I want to say. One is that Aerie did a great job with the GSXR thing, and most of the experiences I've had with GSXRs have been with him, so I don't think the audience missed much with me not being there. The other thing I want to say is if you are a Harley lover and you hate how we always bash Harleys, great news, we're talking about Harleys, and I think that it's going to be really fun, and I think I love a Sportster, so I think you're going to be very happy. And on the flip side of that coin, if you don't really like Harleys and don't care, don't worry, we're going to bash Harleys plenty in this podcast, OK, everybody, so don't worry.

Spurgeon Dunbar (3:40)

Well, the thing is, we're going to have Patrick Garvin on the episode, and he I'm sure will have some some pros and cons to say. So it's not just Zack and I, and Patrick Garvin, of course, J&P Cycles, Harley-Davidson aficionado, and often a guest on the podcast here. But before we get into Harley-Davidson's, I think we have to talk about something that's just Harley-Davidson adjacent, Sportster's adjacent, if you will, flying motorcycles. Zack, when's the last time we talked about flying motorcycles on this podcast?

Zack Courts (4:12)

OK, so this is where I'm going to slip into producer chase mode here because I had no idea any of this happened. But chase pointed out that season nine, episode 12 of this podcast, which we released February 1st, 2025, we covered this company that came out with a flying motorcycle, this sky rider or something like that, whatever, doesn't really matter.