CVO’s are suppose to be the top of the line for HD.
When the lower trims have better paint, it’s just wrong.
2022 and earlier CVO’s an HD dealer would never have had a brand new CVO with a repaint on the floor. There was no reason

 

 

@Jehu I love an esoteric collection of bikes like yours. - 23 FXLRS/T; '18 RG; '18 FXLR; '10 RK; '18 V-Strom 1000XT; '16 Bandit 1250S; '13 DR650SE.
Never felt a need to swear allegiance to one brand. I lov'em all. Except Hodakas.

 

Yes, it’s pretty sad isn’t it!

I started a similar thread a few months ago when I was at Speedway in Concord and saw their bikes getting new paint upgrades. They all looked nice, but then you have a custom paint job you have to deal with is ever damaged and I sure then are not doing it for nothing.

 

Well I don’t know which one is which, both look like CVO type paint, must be huge mark up to paint over extra cost paint, or they just painted replacement parts.
don’t see the point in buying a limited and numbered paint set, rather buy a black bike and do my own hopped up engine anyway

 

Not anymore… This year Gunslinger painted the Whiskey Neat, but HD painted the Dark Platinum. You are correct that HD used to outsource all of the CVO paint. Over the last few years you can tell the difference in what HD painted vs what they outsourced in the detail and cost. Whiskey Neat +$6k.

It is interesting how the CVO line has evolved. If you think back to the first years of the CVOs there was so much detail. Frames were painted to match the base color of the bike. The bikes were hand assembled and you could always see what set a CVO apart, and no one thought of having to repaint them for them to sell.

 

I finally took a closer look at the '23 CVO lineup today.
Not that I'm in the market for a new bike, much less a CVO, but it's cool to check out the new options.
I was shocked to see that they didn't offer lower fairings or a tourpack on any model other than the Limited Road Glide.

Seems like that extra storage would be a desirable regardless of fairing shape, but what the hell do I know?

I think the Whiskey Neat color is cool, but they should have left the black/graphite graphics off and just shot the whole bike that color.
And a $6K adder for a non-limited, non-numbered, factory paint job is just stupid, IMO.

 

There is one little problem with the way Harley reports units sold. They only account for bikes they shipped to dealers,not a retail sale as that is how HD reports them as sold. There maybe 300+ of them still sitting on dealer showroom floors.

 

when they first came out seems like they sold out fast but now you see a bunch at alll the dealers

 

I was just at the small South Orlando dealership last week, and they had 10 CVO bikes there! All silver. 10! This place is pretty small. I know they share bikes with the other Orlando dealerships, but even if they had ALL of their CVO’s, that’s a lot of CVO’s to have sitting in a store this late in the year. I think price and color is hurting Harley.