The Harley-Davidson Pan America ride report

The Pan America presentation at a historic location in the Westerburg countryside!

HARLEY-DAVIDSON PAN AMERICA DRIVING REPORT - Harley-Davidson has flown in 25 of the new Harley-Davidson Adventure models for the European presentation of the Pan America. Those responsible have repeatedly emphasized 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 the appropriate terrain.

Harley-Davidson has prioritized the two important markets. The fact that the Pan America was the first to be officially presented in Germany is a sign of how important the German-speaking customers are to them, and I found this statement very interesting.

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

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

Because the terrain is full of basalt that was formed during a volcanic eruption millions of years ago. And that's exactly how they imagined it, they shoot into a new segment with the new Pan America, like a volcanic eruption, flattening everything that came before and when the volcanic ash has settled, the competitors ask themselves what happened.

The registration figures at the end of the year will tell us whether this will remain my fantasy. The 2021 contingent is limited, but Pan America will take its market share and its success will only be slowed down by low production figures. Harley-Davidson is also addressing a completely new target group in addition to the existing customer base, 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 that statement.

Harleysite

The new Revolution Max motor in reality

I am now deliberately starting with the new Revolution Max Motor because it is the heart of the Pan America, around which everything else has been built. It will also be used in the future for Harley-Davidson will generally play a very important role and appeal to a more sporty target group away from the existing clientele. This will also have an impact on the community and events; sometimes I already have the feeling that two different worlds are colliding here.

A very big topic is the Variable valve timing, They may not have reinvented this, but they have done it very well. The engine has an incredible all-round quality, which I would not have expected. The Revolution Max can run as smooth as butter in rain mode and gets really angry in sport mode.

Harley-Davidson has focused on achieving smooth torque transmission in the lower rev range at low speeds and when riding off-road thanks to the throttle control. In the corresponding riding modes, the Pan America knows exactly what is required in each case.

The Revolution Max motor is adaptable!

And it was precisely this situation that I noticed immediately and positively off-road. Off-road in particular, this is one of the most important features of the engine; when off-road mode is activated, the driving behavior is completely different from that in sport mode, for example. From now on, a performance evaluation of the engine is only possible in combination with the specified driving modes, as this can change everything.

Despite the cool temperatures, there were plenty of tarnished manifolds. Harley-Davidson has moved the second cylinder a little further to the left, so that the rear manifold has better exhaust gas behavior and does not jam directly at the exhaust when removing the gases. Nowadays, engine temperatures can also be regulated by software, so the more you can regulate in advance by mechanical means, the better, they must 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 fewer cubic meters and adjustable engine management via the riding modes. There are hardly any noticeable vibrations, which was intentional with the Milwaukee-Eight.

What is extremely noticeable is the smooth running and that it is very quiet, there is no clattering or rattling. I would never have expected Harley-Davidson to build something like this, whether you like it or not is another matter, but they can certainly do it.

Pan America Sportmode - Only flying is more beautiful

The engine and this whole system are very well suited to the Pan America, the possible differences are really blatant. I went up the highway in Sport mode, you really have to hold on tight, I felt my stomach muscles again straight away, especially the day after.

My colleague from Reitwagen in Austria measured approx. 6.6 seconds from 100km/h to 200km/h with GPS. That's really intense, according to the speedometer I only reached the end at 227 km/h. With the Michelin studded tires, only 170 km/h are permitted, and they are not intended for more, although I can say that both tire versions offer very good handling. I was particularly impressed with the road version on wet roads, which is not usually the case with the Michelin Scorcher. On dry roads, the tire cut a good figure anyway, and we only had an outside temperature of between 2 and 5 degrees. It will be interesting to see how this combination of power and grip performs in the long-term test.

The different driving modes work really well

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 option of configuring the character of the engine himself and can copy and reconfigure a driving mode. 5 settings are available: Road, Sport, Rain, Offroad and Offroad Plus. One mode can be individualized in the standard version and two in the special version. Here, even the engine braking effect is taken into account, and the cornering ABS and cornering traction control also adapt to the required situation. These options are new in the Harley world and were absolutely convincing during the test rides off-road and on the road.

Many questions in the community

I was asked by a reader whether the Pan America would be suitable for a driving school, and I would clearly say yes, because the driving mode configuration gives the driving instructor the option of tuning the student into either a tame house cat or, for the more advanced student, a wild tiger to prepare them for anything. The Pan America only has full power in Sport mode, which is hot and in this mode things really get going.

In rain mode, you have plenty of safety reserves, so if you can't cope with this, you should perhaps reconsider riding a motorcycle. Incidentally, rain mode is also ideal for beginners on dry roads; in this mode, Pan America is more in control. The new technology is fabulous, but will cause gloating among purists, but that has always been the case.

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 ride on the road, we had everything you can have, from rain, sleet and dry roads, everything was there. In rain mode, it is really tame, yet it still gets going without losing contact with the road and gives the rider a very safe riding experience even in the rain, which is where the sensors really 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 rode on the basalt terrain on the first day and here I was only in second gear at most, I didn't really get to use the real power because she was already going so fast in the lower gears that I couldn't keep up as a rider. We had two professionals with us who guided us through the terrain, when you see how Busty Wolter and Tobi Weiser with the Pan America, I really still had room for improvement. The two of them got us on track, the last time I was off-road was 35 years ago, but that made me want to do more again! I can only recommend training with professionals, it's really fun.

Great handling off-road, it can do something!

My first concern was the weight distribution and handling. In first gear, you can stop perfectly and then slowly start off again after a few seconds of standing still. If you do balance exercises or balance yourself to ride up a hill, the Pan America shows its best side. The Pan America weighs approx. 258 kilos ready to ride, but you don't really notice much of this off-road. Its weight distribution is perfect, and the word „mass centralization“ is increasingly being used in the development of new motorcycles.

On the stony basalt terrain, I give her the spurs!

Basically, the first two gears are easily enough here, and when I rev the second gear up to 9000 rpm, the only thing more beautiful is flying. It is brute and tame at the same time, as soon as I start to twist the throttle, it makes its power available promptly and when I juggle it downhill between stones, I work with the engine brake and the easily adjustable Brembo brake.

Gravel, jumps, water and always full on!

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

In addition, the battery is still easily accessible, but water-protected. I can't really say that about the battery, we had two models registered in the Netherlands where the battery was discharged twice, this may have been due to the batteries, or simply because they weren't charged enough and were played down, the others didn't have this problem. It feels like it needs a strong battery, which will become clear in a longer test window.

The cooling fins can really take a beating, no machine has suffered any damage, which speaks for a good material. Harley-Davidson offers underbody protection as an accessory, so you will be on the safe side, and it rounds off the design visually.

There are plenty of accessories for the cross area

There are some accessories that you can do, but there are also some that you have to do. On the Harleysite Facebook page I have given the tank pad a must-have recommendation, you wouldn't believe what was going on. Anyone who rides off-road and is annoyed by scratches etc., I don't want to go into any more detail.

The point is to maintain the value as much as possible, and the tank pad contributes to this, because this is exactly where I have seen the paint start to become dull and matt. That's because that's where you build up stability as a rider and you can do that particularly well when these pads are on. Of course, you can also help yourself with 3M film, but at some point it becomes unsightly at the edges and doesn't provide any grip.

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 invoice, you should definitely order the main stand as well. It allows the Pan America to be set up very quickly and safely, especially on unstable ground. The main stand always pays off when greasing the chain quickly, during ferry crossings or when tensioning the chain and mounting the bike. You can find more information about the accessories in this Contribution, on the Harley site.

The Pan America lighting concept

LED light is a major feature of the Pan America, and the Special even comes with additional cornering lights. The Adaptive Daymaker Signature headlamp comprises three additional LED light elements on each side above the Daymaker main headlamp. The system works, I tried it out a little off-road in the evening. This topic will come later in the long-term test.

Full illumination is achieved with the additional Auxiliary LED Forward Light Set. Installed as a pair, each light fulfills three functions in one housing: fog light, additional low beam and off-road light. The lights have been developed together with the machine, which is why they are simple and easy to fit.

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

The indicators are purely indicators and not additional lights; overall, the lighting provides very good illumination, although the standard version does not have cornering lights.

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

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

Harley-Davidson and the Showa chassis

The semi-active suspension consists of a complex system that receives its information via various sensors. The damping at the front and rear is electronically adapted to the respective ground and road conditions. Here, Harley-Davidson has worked together with the renowned suspension manufacturer Showa, with the control software being developed by Harley-Davidson itself.

It has 191 mm suspension travel at the front and rear, with a Showa upside-down fork with 47 mm stanchion diameter and semi-active damper control at the front. The rear suspension element is a Showa (Balanced Free Rear Cushion-lite) shock absorber.
Central suspension 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 suspension strut. These are cool features, to summarize, the sensors pass all the information on to the software to get the best possible handling for the driver.

To get from all this theory back into practice, everything worked really well on my test rides, no bottoming out off-road, at high speeds over 200 km/h in a long bend there was no oscillation and it only wants to ride on one wheel if you go 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 suspension lowering. At first, I didn't understand how it worked at all and especially why it didn't do what I expected in certain settings. There is the option to deactivate it via the menu navigation if you are a bit taller and don't want to use this feature. However, 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 lowers very smoothly and raises again when you start off.

When I want to park it, I am in lowered mode, when I get off and come back a short time later, it is raised. Only when I sit on it and start the engine does it lower itself again. This is the point where I would have liked an additional switch to intervene manually in this system. Maybe this will change in the future via a software update, because otherwise I think it's contradictory.

This basically only affects smaller riders, because you have to sit on it, otherwise nothing happens. I don't want to rule out the possibility that I've done everything right. Apart from that, it works very well and taller riders in particular get an even better feeling when standing. It has to be said that Harley-Davidson is really far ahead here, I had never seen a system like this before. And when the name Showa was mentioned, I was amazed at the price, which I still am today.

In the following photo, I am standing in lowered mode. I am 1.83cm tall, from the ground to the top of my waistband I am 1.07m with boots. Depending on the automatically adjusted spring preload on the rear wheel, the lowering is 25 to 50 millimeters. The seat is also height-adjustable in two stages on both models.

The 6.8-inch touch screen display

The 6.8-inch touchscreen display, which can be swiveled and is easy to read, is a little too small. The first difference to the Boom!Box is that the touchscreen cannot be operated by touch while driving and there are no loudspeakers. With the Pan America, everything is done via headset, which is recommended anyway. There are already helmets from Harley-Davidson for the Adventure Bike, which are prepared for a headset with a recess inside.

I myself have been riding with the Harley-Davidson Bluetooth helmet Boom! Audio N02 Full-Face - 98208-20EX, which already has an integrated system from Sena. Harley-Davidson is probably planning to bring out another cross helmet in the future, also with a similar system to the Full Face helmet. I'm very happy with the one I have though, it has the mesh system to communicate with other riders and can do everything you need, it just doesn't look like a crosser.

There is so much going on inside the touchscreen that I can't fit it all into this report. It's worth mentioning that the rider can simply connect their cell phone to the Harley-Davidson system via Bluetooth using the H-D Connect APP. Navigation is activated via the cell phone, no map updates are required, the infotainment system retrieves this information via the cell phone and even saves the maps offline in the H-D 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 yet managed to do, I now find at Harley-Davidson. They have installed a USB-C connector, which is hard to believe, so you are really up to date, to 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 got to know her with a completely different character, for the first time I'm driving in road and sport mode. It's hard to believe, now it's time to hold on tight, the music starts playing at 2000 revs and only stops at an incredible 9000 revs. When driving on winding roads, the road mode is perfectly adequate, so the safety systems are fully active if necessary.

Sport mode also means sport for the driver!

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

Whether it can withstand all this in the long term and how suitable it is for long journeys will only be known after a really long test. The handling with luggage, the consumption and what happens after 5 hours of highway driving, how comfortable the seat really is, it was great, but on long journeys the cards are reshuffled.

The Harleysite conclusion!

They always say that first impressions count!

The first WOW effect for me was still the price announcement, nobody expected it to end up under 20,000 euros. In this case, I immediately forgive a few weaknesses that I noticed. The steering damper on the Special, only it has one and it was capable of totally irritating me. Off-road, I always wanted to let the front wheel run its course and it always pushed back slightly. The developers said that it was specially built for off-road terrain so that there are no hard setbacks. Talking to colleagues, I found out that opinions are actually split, there were advocates, so it's probably more of an individual opinion.

In the bends 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 driving at full speed with luggage. If the aluminum luggage system is installed, I could imagine that it will make a very good contribution to stable handling. But that's just a guess, the whole suitcase story will have to come later, the accessories were not the focus here, it was mainly about the Pan America itself.

I don't like the large windshield, it breaks the lines of the lane markings, I would replace it, and it's too wobbly for me. The windshield adjustment system is ingenious, like a revolver, press the trigger and the windshield can be easily adjusted with one hand. But the plastic looks too cheap to me, an aluminum concept would have shown much more value here. But the question is, would the price still have been sustainable?

And now? That's it, there's nothing more to complain about from my side, I think it's awesome! The engine and the electronics really blow you away, the set-up even works as intended. For those who have already bought the Standard or Special, you can rest assured that the first impression is great and you're getting an awesome 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, it weighs less due to fewer accessories and is somewhat purer. But my recommendation would still be the Special, it simply convinced me, and I have to mention that I have ridden it more. For me, the grip heating, the main stand and the chassis would be important, otherwise I'm sure that both models will often be seen on the roads in the future, because they were a lot of fun!

Thumbs up!

The Harleysite Pan America report as a podcast

The live interview on 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
Unladen weight incl. operating materials (ready to drive) kg:	245 (RA 1250S: 258)
Fuel consumption l:	approx. 5.5
Guarantee:	four years
Expected to be on sale in Germany/Austria:	June 2021

Recommended retail prices Germany
Pan America 1250 (RA 1250): from 15,995 euros (plus transport and installation fee of 560 euros)
Pan America 1250 Special (RA 1250S): from 17,995 euros* (plus transport and installation 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 transportation and installation fee)
Pan America 1250 Special (RA 1250S): from 21,695 euros* (including transportation and set-up fee) *Surcharge for cross-spoke wheels: 505 euros, surcharge for Adaptive Ride Height System: 700 euros