The Harley-Davidson Pan America driving report

The Pan America presentation at a historic location, in the Westerburger Land!

HARLEY-DAVIDSON PAN AMERICA RIDING REPORT - Harley-Davidson flew 25 of the new Harley-Davidson Adventure models to the European presentation of the Pan America. Those responsible have emphasized several times that this is the first official international Pan America presentation and will give German and Austrian journalists the first opportunity to test the standard and special models in suitable terrain.

Harley-Davidson has set the priority of the two important markets high. The fact that Pan America was the first to be officially presented in Germany was intended to show how important the German-speaking customers are to them, for whom we report at the end. I found this statement very interesting.

The Pan America celebrates its official premiere in the Stöffel-Park industrial adventure park

Harley-Davidson has located Stöffel Park in Westerburger Land, an ideal place to test the Pan America. At first glance, the 140-hectare industrial adventure park is probably intended more for geologists, but as it later turned out, there is hardly a better place than the historic basalt quarry. In my imagination I can see the connections directly, a historic company from Milwaukee is essentially letting the boiling magma shoot up from the inner volcano on which we will ride the new Pan America.

The area is full of basalt, which was formed during a volcanic eruption millions of years ago. And that's exactly how they imagined it, they're launching the new Pan America into a new segment like a volcanic eruption, destroying everything that came before it and when the volcanic ash has settled, the competitors are wondering what happened now.

The admission numbers will tell us at the end of the year whether that will remain my fantasy. The 2021 contingent is limited, but Pan America will get its market share and its success will only be slowed down by low production numbers. Harley-Davidson is also addressing a completely new target group in addition to its existing customers, which will change a lot in the future.

What once started on a blank sheet of paper will cause quite a stir this year, I am very sure of this statement.

Harleysite

The new Revolution Max engine in reality

I'm starting now with the new Revolution Max engine , because that's the heart of the Pan America , around which everything else has been built. In addition, he will play a very important role Harley-Davidson This will also have an impact on the community and events; sometimes I already have the feeling that two different worlds are meeting here.

A very big topic is variable valve control , they haven't reinvented it, but they have implemented it very well. The engine has an incredible all-rounder quality, I wouldn't have expected that. The Revolution Max can run smoothly in rain mode and gets really angry in sport mode.

Harley-Davidson has placed emphasis on smoothly realizing low-end torque delivery at low speeds and off-road driving through throttle control. In the appropriate driving modes, the Pan America knows exactly what is required.

The Revolution Max Motor is adaptable!

And it was exactly this situation that I noticed immediately and positively in the field. This is one of the most important features of the engine, especially off-road. When off-road mode is activated, the driving behavior is completely different than, for example, in sport mode. From now on, a performance evaluation of the engine is only possible in combination with the specified driving mode, because that can change everything.

In any case, despite the cool temperatures, there were plenty of tarnished manifolds. Harley-Davidson has moved the second cylinder a little further to the left, so the rear manifold has better exhaust gas behavior and does not build up directly at the exhaust when the gases are transported away. Nowadays, engine temperatures can also be controlled by software. The more you can regulate in advance mechanically, the better, you might have thought.

The Revolution Max motor is water-cooled, so I won't be able to find out whether heat is a problem for it until the summer months.

The Revolution Max engine is a completely new development and cannot be compared with the Milwaukee-Eight. It is not a typical long-stroke engine, revs much higher, has less cubic capacity and adjustable engine management via the driving modes. There are hardly any noticeable vibrations, which was intended with the Milwaukee-Eight.

What is extremely noticeable is how smooth it runs and that it is very quiet, there is no clattering or rattling. I would never have expected Harley-Davidson to build something like that, whether they think it's good is another piece of paper, but they can definitely do it.

Pan America sports fashion – only flying is more beautiful

The engine and this whole system fit very well with the Pan America, the possible differences are really stark. I went up the highway in sport mode, you really have to hold on tight, I immediately felt my abdominal muscles again, especially the day after.

My colleague from Reitwagen in Austria measured about 6.6 seconds from 100km/h to 200km/h using GPS. That's really intense, according to the speedometer, the end was only announced for me at 227km/h. The Michelin studded tires are only permitted at 170 km/h, they are not intended for more than that, although I can attribute very good driving behavior to both tire versions. I was particularly impressed with the road version on wet roads, which I usually am not with the Michelin Scorcher. The tire performed well on dry roads anyway, although the outside temperature was only between 2 and 5 degrees. It will be interesting to see how this combination of power and grip performs in long-term testing.

The different driving modes work tremendously

It would be too easy to just look at the performance data of the engine; those days are over with the Pan America. The driver now has the opportunity to configure the character of the engine itself and can copy and reconfigure a driving mode, there are 5 settings, Road, Sport, Rain, Off-Road and Off-Road Plus. In the standard version one mode can be customized, in the special version there are two. Even the engine braking effect is taken into account here, and the cornering ABS and cornering traction control adapt to the required situation in the same way. These options are new in the Harley world and they were absolutely convincing in the off-road and on-road test drives.

Lots of questions in the community

A reader asked me whether the Pan America would be suitable for a driving school. I would clearly say yes, because the driving mode configuration gives the driving instructor the opportunity to either set up a tame house cat for the student or for an advanced one Students a wild tiger to prepare him for anything. The Pan America only has full performance in Sport mode, which is hot and in this mode something really happens.

In rain mode you have plenty of safety reserves, so if you can't cope with that, you should probably reconsider riding a motorbike. Furthermore, the rain mode is ideal for novice drivers, even on dry roads; in this mode the Pan America is more in control. The new technology is amazing, but it will cause malice among purists, but it has always been that way.

Cornering Rider Safety Enhancements

This is a package of electronic assistance systems that makes driving very safe. A sophisticated sensor system that even has the lean angle under control. During the test drive on the road we had everything you could have, from rain, sleet and dry roads, everything was there. In rain mode, it is really tame, but it still starts moving without losing contact with the road and gives the driver a very safe driving experience even in the rain, which is where the sensors come into their own. It has cornering-optimized electronic brake force distribution, a cornering anti-lock braking system, cornering traction control and cornering traction control.

Off-road with the Pan America

I drove on the Basalt terrain on the first day and the maximum I could do was second gear. I didn't even get to use the real power because it was already moving so fast in the lower gears that I couldn't even do it as a driver I came along. We had two professionals with us who showed us around the area. When you saw how Busty Wolter and Tobi Weiser rode the Pan America, I really still had room for improvement. The two of them got us on track, I last went off-road 35 years ago, but that made me want more! I can only recommend such training with professionals to everyone, it really puts you in a good mood.

Great handling off-road, it can do something!

My first concern was weight distribution and handling. In first gear you can stop easily and slowly start moving again after a few seconds of standing still. When you do balance exercises or balance yourself to go up a hill, the Pan America shows itself at its best. The Pan America weighs around 258 kilos when ready to drive, but you don't really notice much of it off-road. Their weight distribution is perfect; the word “mass centralization” is heard more and more in the development of new motorcycles.

On the stony basalt terrain, I give her spurs!

Basically, the first two gears are easily enough here, if I turn the second gear up to 9000 rpm, flying is even nicer. It is brutal and tame at the same time, as soon as I turn off the accelerator, it immediately makes its power available and when I juggle it downhill between stones, I work with the engine brake and the easy-to-adjust Brembo brake.

Gravel, jumps, water and always full of energy!

There was a full program, going through the water, up the hill and back down again. There was gravel in the form of basalt everywhere, which immediately raised a few questions from some users who follow me on Facebook. The cooling fins are visually completely in the endangered area. When asked by the developers at Harley-Davidson, they tested it extensively and, just like with the battery, which is also housed there, they discovered no problems.

The battery is still easy to access, but protected from water. I can't really say that about the battery, we had two models that are registered in the Netherlands where the battery was discharged twice, that could have been due to the batteries, or because they were simply not charged enough and had been drained the others did not have this problem. It feels like it needs a strong battery, which will become apparent in a longer test window.

The cooling fins really can withstand a lot; none of the machines suffered any damage, which speaks for a good material. Harley-Davidson offers underbody protection in its range of accessories, so you can drive on the safe side and it visually rounds off the design.

There are plenty of accessories for the cross area

You can definitely improve the look of it, there are some accessories that you can make, but there are also some that you have to make. On the Harleysite Facebook page I gave the tank pad a must-have recommendation, you wouldn't believe what was going on there. Anyone who drives off-road and is annoyed about scratches, etc., I don't want to go into it any further.

It's all about preserving the value as much as possible, and the tank pad contributes to that, because it's exactly at this point that I saw the paint starting to become matt and dull. This is because as a driver you build up stability there and you can do that particularly well when these pads are on. That's actually it, you can of course also use 3M film, but at some point it becomes unsightly at the edges and doesn't provide any support.

Main stand, radiator guard and lamp grille

If you really want to go off-road often, the radiator guard and the lamp grille certainly make sense; they look quite good. If you have the Pan America Standard on your bill, you should definitely order the main stand as well, as the Pan America can be set up very quickly and safely, which is particularly beneficial on unsafe surfaces. Quickly grease the chain, on ferry crossings or when tensioning the chain and assembling the wheel, the main stand always pays off. You can find more information about accessories in this article on the Harley site.

The Pan America lighting concept

LED lighting is very important on the Pan America, and on the Special there is even additional cornering light. The Adaptive Daymaker Signature headlight includes three additional LED lighting elements per side above the Daymaker main headlight. The system works, I tried it out a little in the field in the evening. The topic comes later in the long-term test.

You get full illumination with the additional Auxiliary LED Forward Light Set. Installed as a pair, each light performs three functions in one housing: fog lights, additional low beam and off-road lights. The lights were developed together with the machine, which is why they are easy and precise to install.

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Daymaker LED Forward additional headlight Art. No.: 68000340 approx. 650.-€

The indicators are pure indicators and no additional lights. Overall, the lighting provides very good illumination, although the standard does not have cornering lights.

Pan America 1250 Special with adaptive seat height and semi-active chassis

To understand the whole thing, you have to know that there are actually two systems, only the Pan America Special has the semi-active chassis and that can also be upgraded with the Adaptive Ride Height System.

Harley-Davidson and the Showa chassis

The semi-active chassis consists of a complex system that receives information from various sensors. The damping at the front and rear is electronically adjusted to the respective ground and road conditions. Here Harley-Davidson worked in cooperation with the renowned chassis manufacturer Showa, with the control software being from Harley-Davidson itself.

It has 191 mm of suspension travel at the front and rear, and a Showa upside-down fork with a 47 mm standpipe diameter and semi-active damper control is installed at the front.
The rear spring element is a Showa (Balanced Free Rear Cushion-lite) central spring strut with electronically controlled preload and semi-active damping control.

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The vehicle loading control system registers the weight of the driver, front passenger and luggage and automatically adjusts the spring preload of the rear shock absorber. These are cool features, to sum it up, the sensors pass on all the information to the software in order to get the most optimal driving behavior for the driver.

Now to get this whole theory back into practice, everything worked great in my test rides, no bottoming out on the terrain, at high speeds over 200 km/h in a long curve there was no need to commute and want to ride on one bike They only drive if you give full throttle in Sport mode. It is very easy to control.

Adaptive ride height system

And now we come to the Adaptive Ride Height System, the automatic chassis lowering. At first I didn't understand at all how it works and especially why it doesn't do what I expected in certain settings. There is the option to deactivate it via the menu navigation if you are a little taller and don't want to use this feature. But I hadn't deactivated it and had probably activated a driving mode that it doesn't work with. When you come to a stop, it goes down very smoothly and goes back up again when you start.

When I want to turn it off, I'm in lowered mode, when I get off and come back after a short while, it's up. Only when I sit on it and start the engine does it shut down again. This is the point where I would have liked an additional switch to manually intervene in this system. This may change in the future via a software update, because in my opinion it would otherwise be contradictory.

This basically only affects smaller drivers, because you have to sit on it, otherwise nothing happens. I don't want to rule out that I did everything right. Otherwise it works very well and taller drivers get an even better feeling of standing, especially when stationary. You have to say that Harley-Davidson is really ahead of the game here; I never knew of a system like that before. And as soon as the name Showa was mentioned, I was amazed at the price announcement, which I still do today.

In the following photo, I am standing in lowered mode. I'm 1.83cm tall, from the floor to the top of my trousers it's 1.07m with boots on. The lowering is 25 to 50 millimeters, depending on the automatically adjusted spring preload on the rear wheel. In addition, the seat is height-adjustable in two levels on both models.

The 6.8 inch touch screen display

What's a little lacking now is the 6.8-inch touchscreen display; it can be swiveled and is easy to read. The first difference to the Boom!Box is that the touchscreen cannot be operated by touch while driving and there are no speakers. At Pan America everything is done via a headset, which is recommended anyway. There are already helmets from Harley-Davidson for adventure bikes that are prepared for a headset with a recess inside.

I personally am using the Harley-Davidson Bluetooth Helmet Boom! Audio N02 Full-Face - 98208-20EX has been on the road, a system from Sena is already integrated here. Harley-Davidson is probably planning to release another cross helmet in the future, also with a similar system to the full face helmet. But I'm very happy with what I have, it has the mesh system to communicate with other drivers and can do everything you need, it just doesn't look like a crosser.

There's so much going on inside the touchscreen that I can't fit it all into this report. It should be mentioned that the driver can easily connect his cell phone to the Harley-Davidson system via Bluetooth; this requires the HD Connect APP. Navigation is activated via the cell phone, it does not require any map updates, the infotainment system gets this information via the cell phone and even saves the maps offline in the HD Connect APP.

And if you have a cell phone on board, you may also need some power! What I discovered almost knocked my socks off. What many manufacturers in the electronics industry have not been able to achieve to date, I now find at Harley-Davidson. They have installed a USB-C plug, which is hard to believe, so you are really up to date, so you can stay in the German language. I installed my system straight away and it worked great.

On the road with the Pan America

Now I've gotten to know her with a completely different character, for the first time I'm driving in street and sport mode. It's hard to believe, now it's time to hold on tight, the music starts playing at just 2000 revolutions and it only stops at an incredible 9000 revolutions. When driving on winding roads, road mode is sufficient, so the safety systems are fully active if necessary.

Sport mode also means sport for the driver!

On the highway, however, the Sportmode makes its appearance, hold on and go. I have to keep telling myself that I'm sitting on an enduro, a Harley one at that, and the digital speedometer is marching with me to 227 km/h. That was really an experience, not really anything new for me, but definitely in connection with the Pan America. At times I felt like I was sitting on a burner. But of course, it has 1250 cubic meters, 128 NM and 152 HP, there's something going on! I don't want to know what's going on with her when she gets an expert mapping.

Whether it can withstand all of this in the long term and what its suitability for long distances is will only be found out with the really longer test. The driving behavior with luggage, the consumption and what happens after 5 hours of motorway driving, how comfortable is the seat really, it was great, but the cards are reshuffled on long journeys.

The Harleysite conclusion!

They always say that first impressions count!

The first WOW effect for me was still the price announcement, nobody expected that it would even end up under 20,000 euros. In that case, I'll immediately forgive her for a few weaknesses that I noticed. The steering damper on the Special, only she has one and it was able to totally irritate me. Off-road I always wanted to let the front wheel go its way and it always pushed back slightly. The developers have said it was built specifically for the site so there would be no harsh setbacks. In talking to colleagues, I found that opinions were actually divided, there were advocates, so it's probably a very individual view.

In the curves on the road it was a similar situation for me, I don't like it, this slight counter pressure irritates me. Unfortunately it is not adjustable, but I can imagine where it will actually find its purpose, namely when traveling at full speed with luggage. If the aluminum case system is installed, I could imagine that it contributes significantly to stable driving behavior. But that's just a guess, the whole case story has to come later, the accessories weren't the focus now, this was mainly about the Pan America itself.

I don't like the large window, it breaks the lines of the road markings, I would replace it, and it's too flimsy for me. The disc adjustment system is ingenious, press the trigger like a revolver and the disc can be easily adjusted with one hand. But the plastic seems too cheap to me; an aluminum concept would have shown much more value here. The only question is, would the price have been able to be maintained?

And now? That's it, there's nothing more to complain about from my side, I think she's hot! The engine and electronics really blow your mind, the set-up even works as intended. For those who have already bought the Standard or Special, you can rest assured, the first impression is great and you are getting a great bike! There is a difference between the standard and the special, but it's better to have the standard than none at all.

The chassis is really great, the standard is not really inferior to the Special, because it has fewer accessories, it weighs less and is a bit purer. My recommendation would still be the Special, it simply convinced me, and I have to mention that I also drove it more. For me, the heated grips, the main stand and the chassis would be important, otherwise I'm sure that both models will be seen on the roads often in the future, because it was a lot of fun!

Thumbs up!

The Harleysite Pan America report as a podcast

The live interview about Pan America, with Heinz Christmann from Dream Machines on YouTube

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Harley-Davidson Pan America sound with Screamin' Eagle exhaust

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Technical data: Pan America Harley-Davidson

Pan America 1250 (RA 1250) and Pan America 1250 Special (RA 1250S)

Power kW (HP)/rpm:	112 (152)/8.750
Torque Nm/rpm:	128/6.750
Empty weight including operating materials (ready to drive) kg:	245 (RA 1250S: 258)
Fuel consumption l:	approx. 5.5
Guarantee:	four years
Expected to be available in Germany/Austria:	June 2021

Recommended retail prices Germany
Pan America 1250 (RA 1250): from 15,995 euros (plus transport and setup fee of 560 euros)
Pan America 1250 Special (RA 1250S): from 17,995 euros* (plus transport and assembly fee of 560 euros) *Surcharge for cross-spoke wheels: 500 euros, surcharge for Adaptive Ride Height System: 660 euros

Recommended retail prices Austria
Pan America 1250 (RA 1250): from 18,995 euros (including transport and setup fee)
Pan America 1250 Special (RA 1250S): from 21,695 euros* (including transport and assembly fee) *Surcharge for cross-spoke wheels: 505 euros, surcharge for Adaptive Ride Height System: 700 euros