I sold my Sportster and bought a Dyna . The proud new owner of my Sportster is a girl . So there it is , irrefutable proof that I used to own a girl's bike .
Just joking . A Sportster is anybody's bike who is prepared to take it on . Compared to modern Japanese bikes it is brutally basic particularly in the suspension department . It takes time and patience to coax the best performance out of the engine and some degree of mechanical empathy before you master the art of being in the right gear at the right time . The bike makes a fearsome racket with anything but stock pipes and the whole thing wobbles and quakes like a broken washing machine . You've got to stop to put fuel in it every 90 miles or so but that's ok because your **** will have gone square from sitting on a seat like a plank . So there it is , if that sounds like a girl's bike to you , just go on repeating that tired old mantra again and again etc .....

 

 

 

I wish I'd kept my Sportster. It was (probably still is) a great bike. I don't know how Sportsters came to be regarded as the girl's Harley; they always had the best power to weight ratio and the choppiest idle of all (air cooled) stock H-Ds.

 

Because to too many people engine displacement is a dick measuring contest. Hence the terms, girls bike, beginners bike, starter bike, etc... An almost 1 liter, 550 lb motorcycle is NOT a beginner or a starter bike. PERIOD.

 

A liter bike that puts out 203hp is NOT a beginners bike, 550lb's or not. A liter bike that puts out 50hp is a beginners bike, 550lb's or not.

 

I disagree, a Honda Rebel and the like are a beginners/starter bike. Horsepower aside, a 'beginner' is liable to drop/dump their bike while learning, 550 lbs is an issue as 550 lbs is NOT that easy to pick back up.

Only in the world of Harley Davidson...

 

I don't speak metric, so I'll leave the liters to you, but I'm pretty sure mine had more displacement than that and didn't weigh 550 pounds. The rubber mount ones must have added a bunch of weight. It was a starter bike for me. I even took the driving test on it.

 

1000cc's = 1 liter.

If, IF the Sportster is/was such a fantastic 'starter bike', why didn't Harley Davidson use them in their rider training programs instead of the Street bikes? Answer is, the Sportster is NOT a starter bike, it simply is/was the least expensive way into the world of air cooled, V-twin Harley Davidson motorcycles.

 

As it's been said before, of course it's a girl bike! Skinny frame, big jugs. (all 600lbs of it)