I think the New Custom looks very much like the Sportsters that are remaining, which is the Iron, Roadster and 48. Not so much like some of the Sportsters in the past such as the 1200C or 72.

I also think you have hit on a point the MoCo may not have been thinking about when they made the New Custom the replacement for the Sportster. One of the great things about the Sportster was it had been around for so long, there is so much aftermarket support for it, and you could make a Sportster be anything you want it to be. Want a Scrambler, an Adventure Bike, a Touring bike, a Canyon Carver, a Sport Bike, a drag bike, a hard tail chopper, you can make a Sportster into anything, there are parts for it you just spend a few hours on the internet wait a few days and get to work. When the New Custom comes out it will be a long time before there will be than much versatility.

Hopefully the MoCo will take the revolution motor and put it in some different frames to make sport bikes, scramblers, and others.

 

I think that's exactly what H-D was planning back in 2018. Instead of making one bike and accessories to convert it to another type of bike as best they could, the plan was to make entirely new bikes around the same Revolution Max engine just like Kawasaki did with the engine from the Ninja.

Instead of a scrambler H-D is making the Pan America ADV bike. The 1250 Custom is, in the eyes of some of you guys, a replacement for the Sportster Irons.There are drawings out there for a bike that's more like my XL1200C, and also a café racer which is the likely replacement for the Roadster.

The Bronx was to be, and I suspect eventually still will be, a street naked to appeal to the young guys buying crotch rockets from competitors today. Just add some fairings and H-D will have a sport bike. Those are both motorcycles that H-D has to make to take market share from other manufacturers.

Of course that was all part of the "More Roads" plan and not "The Rewire" which is slashing new models.