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Most of us find motorcycles themselves gratifying—objects of art with an innate beauty that fills some need within us. Motorcyclists tend to be gearheads. We love looking at our motorcycles almost as much as we love riding them. (In fact, some folks seem to be more enamored of viewing their machines than they are of riding them; legions of people trailer their motorcycles to different events around the country instead of riding them.) Motorcycles possess a raw mechanical beauty. You'll be seeing all kinds of beautiful bikes throughout this book, but for starters, I think no bike better illustrates this visceral look than Harley-Davidson's Sportster. While Sportsters are Harley's smallest bikes, they are by no means small. They're midsize bikes, weighing around 525 pounds with a full tank of gas. Visually, the 1998 model is little changed from the original Sportster introduced in 1957, and many people agree that that's a good thing. Until 2004, Sportsters were practically dinosaurs in every respect: They weren't very powerful, they were uncomfortable, they didn't handle exceptionally well, and they shook like unbalanced washing machines. Yet Harley sold as many of them as it could build. The latest Sportsters, with their rubber-mounted engines, belong firmly in the present. Yet they retain what I believe is an honest, brutal appearance that, to many eyes, is how a motorcycle should look. But now riders no longer have to overlook or correct a Sportster's flaws just to ride the archetypal motorcycle. The looks of most Harleys, not just Sportsters, elicit strong, mostly favorable responses from motorcyclists and nonmotorcyclists alike. No other motorcycle company has had its products elevated to near-art status the way Harley-Davidson has. All of this provides a good example of how important the look of a motorcycle is. That's as true of a Yamaha, Triumph, Laverda, or BMW as it is of a Harley. Motorcyclists love the way bikes look, and for every bike, there is someone who loves its appearance. I learned this the hard way. A while back, in an article on motorcycle style, I poked fun at a bike that was generally accepted as being one of the uglier machines to have been produced during the past 20 years. I wrote that these motorcycles were probably very nice bikes, but they were so butt-ugly that no one ever found out because no one would be seen on one. I thought this was a fair assessment, since the bike had been a sales disaster.
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