First ride - Harley Davidson Dark Custom Iron 883 and Street 750

This is another great year for Harley-Davidson as they raise the bar on their Dark Custom motorcycles. What exactly are the Dark Customs? Well their three motorcycles from Harley Davidson which are raw, stripped down and blacked out with a lot room for customisation. So what have they done to them now?

Well firstly the Dark Custom range includes the Harley-Davidson Iron 883, Forty-Eight and the Street 750. The motorcycles haven’t undergone an extreme evolution but subtle updates have been incorporated based on customer feedback. We didn’t get a chance to ride the Forty-Eight but did ride the Iron 883 and the Street 750 for about 100 km each.

The Iron 883 can be considered as Harley’s factory bobber. It’s bare-boned and raw but now gets a few updates that help take it to a new level. It gets new 9-spoke cast aluminium wheels with machined highlights, a blacked out exhaust system and round air filter that exposes more of the rubber mounted engine and looks pretty cool too. The major changes though are the new tuck and roll seat and a new suspension system. Our short ride on the Iron 883 helped prove how well the new upgrades work. The seat is much more comfortable for riding and the new cartridge emulsion rear shocks make going over potholes a lot easier on your back. However, the front suspension still needs some work. The air-cooled, 883cc Evolution V-Twin engine remains the same and still puts out 50PS of power and 67Nm of Torque. The handling is better than before and still keeps true to its bobber heritage.

The new Dark Custom Street 750 variant looks exactly like the previous Street 750 with a change in the colours available and few minor tweaks. The biggest change is the revised rear disc brake. The rear brake on the older motorcycle lacked bite and feedback which was needed given the performance of their new V-twin engine. Thankfully though, Harley-Davidson have addressed this issue and introduced a new Brembo brake system. You can feel the difference the moment you tap the brake pedal. The braking is now more progressive with good feedback. However there still isn’t an option for an ABS model.

The third model in the Dark Custom Line up is the Forty-Eight which has similar changes like the Iron 883 but we didn’t get time to ride it, so we’ll do a separate review on that later.

The Iron 883 retails at a starting price of for Rs. 7,37,000, the Forty-Eight for Rs.9,12,000 and the Street 750 for Rs. 4, 52,000. 

Now Harley Davidsons are known be highway cruisers and there were many concerns about how well they’ll do on Indian roads. Well they’ve already proven themselves to dependable and powerful enough and now with these new updates, they’ve become a lot better with a lot of room for customisation.