Harley-Davidson and custom motorcycles are virtually the same thing in our world. Although there are many other bikes that get love from custom shops, it's obvious to everyone who's looking that the Milwaukee brand leads the charge.
Harley is essentially an American product, and it is there where it first gained notoriety as the maker of the perfectly customizable platforms. Yet for reasons that elude us it's the foreign markets that are the most prolific are rolling out their own interpretations of the U.S.-made two-wheelers.
The number of foreign custom garages (mostly European, and more specifically German ones) is simply huge, and the number of projects they're responsible for is even more so. Widely varied in design, scope, and price, these bikes still manage to remain essentially Harleys, and that's something we can't say all the time by the other brands being modded.
The Harley custom industry in the home country is almost invisible to the outside observer. It's there, sure, but unlike its foreign counterpart, which uses base models to create worlds of wonder, it is mostly content with building Harley bikes of various kinds from the ground up.
On top of that custom bike garages in the U.S. lack the proper channels to make themselves known to the world (or they simply don't care), and this is why the most extreme modded Harleys come our way from Germany, Switzerland, Japan, or Italy.
But Americans do have someone to look up to for custom rides achieved by modifying base bikes. That someone is called Custom Vehicle Operations (CVO), and it's an offspring of Harley-Davidson itself.
CVO was born as a sort of factory customization program in the late 1990s (1999, to be precise, which means this year the division is celebrating a quarter of a century on the market), and it was meant to supply Harley's pack of alpha customers (the most faithful and hardcore of them, that is) with the best gear Milwaukee had to offer.
The way this was supposed to work was simple. CVO would not produce its own bikes, but take existing ones, from top-of-the-line families like the Street Glide, Road Glide, and Limited, and modify them with gear one couldn't get any other way.
And that's exactly what happened every year since 1999, with select Harley bikes receiving extra everything and being launched onto the market as CVOs. The extra everything list included items like larger engines, top-of-the-line design and paint, and a wealth of unique accessories.
Photo: Harley-Davidson
The bikes made under the CVO umbrella grew with every iteration, until back in 2023 they culminated with the release of specially tweaked versions of the Street Glide and Road Glide motorcycles.
At their core sat an impressive and brand new Milwaukee-Eight engine that was born to be exclusive to the two machines. The specs sheet for the powerplant is impressive: 121ci in displacement (second only to the 131 crate engine for touring models), 115 hp at 4,500 rpm and 189 Nm of torque at 3,000 rpm, and a six-speed Cruise Drive transmission to control it all.
On top of that, the two CVOs for 2023 came with selectable ride modes, something that had never been offered before for these models. Four of them were on the table, Road, Sport, Rain, and Custom.
The bikes also brought to the table a number of design changes, including an all-new batwing for the Street Glide that was exclusive to it. And then, to top it all off, the two rides also offered the Skyline OS, running the "most tech-forward display ever offered for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle" - a 12.3-inch screen TFT that replaced all analog instruments and many of the switches used on the previous versions of the bikes.
All of the above advancements made with the 2023 CVO models, as well as Harley's history with factory customs, got us all very hyped about the 2024 two-wheeled goodies wearing this signature. On January 24, 2024, our expectations were met, after the 2024 Harley-Davidson CVO motorcycles were revealed.
The reveal centered on four motorcycle models. Two of them were part of the regular lineup, and manifested as improved versions of the Harley-Davidson Street Glide and Road Glide, which received a series of small upgrades and a slightly larger, Milwaukee-Eight V-Twin engine that displaces 117ci (power levels stand at 105 hp and 130 ft-lb in both models).
The other two bikes were CVOs true and true, both of them brand new additions to the factory custom roadster. Here's everything we know about them.
2024 Harley-Davidson CVO Road Glide ST
Photo: Harley-Davidson
In all the years CVO has been on the market, it has been linked to the range of motorcycles Harley-Davidson calls Grand American Touring. After all, factory customs are always based on top-of-the-range bikes, and they themselves are poised to become the most exquisite representatives of their breed. And the 2024 Harley-Davidson CVO Road Glide ST does not part ways with that tradition.
The bike is a West Coast style custom true and true, massive and imposing, while at the same time powerful and capable. As per its maker's own statements, the ride is also the "quickest, fastest, and most sophisticated performance bagger ever produced."
We haven't had a chance to test if that's true or not, given how the two-wheeler is fresh on the market, but at least on paper, that claim seems to hold.
The "quickest and fastest" part of that description is an attribute of the bike's engine. For the purposes of this product CVO used a brand-new powerplant, an important addition to the Milwaukee-Eight range: the 121 HO.
Built in the usual Harley-Davidson style, the new engine delivers "the most horsepower and torque ever from a factory-installed engine in a production Harley-Davidson motorcycle." That would be 127 hp and 193 Nm of torque.
These are impressive numbers, and they become even more so when you consider the 2024 CVO Road Glide ST weighs 800 pounds (363 kg, dry). That weight was achieved by using a lot of lightweight components throughout the bike: titanium and carbon fiber on the mufflers, end caps, front fender, seat cowl, and fuel tank console, composites on the oil pan, and Brembo brakes, just to name a few.
Photo: Harley-Davidson
The engine on this motorcycle has been tweaked to have a lower final drive ratio, which in turn provides increased acceleration no matter the gear the transmission is in. A dream setup for people who like to ride their bikes hard.
The CVO ST can be set to work in one of several modes, namely Road, Sport, Track Plus, Rain, and Custom. It uses a racing-inspired suspension system made of inverted 47 mm Showa forks at the front and shock absorbers made by the same company at the rear.
The hot rod bagger is also as modern as they get. CVO deployed the new Skyline operating system on it, a suite that was introduced exactly one year ago on the CVO bikes of that year. The Skyline uses a 12.3-inch TFT touchscreen as an interface, and thanks to that it no longer features any analog instruments, and the number of switches has been reduced to a minimum.
As usual on vehicles of this caliber, the sound system is impressive too. In this case, it consists of a 500-watt amplifier that feeds Rockford Fosgate Stage II 6.5-inch speakers fitted in the usual place, in the fairings.
The 2024 Harley-Davidson CVO Road Glide ST is already on its way to the bike maker's dealers, and it should reach them by the end of the month. The motorcycle will sell in a choice of two colors, Golden White Pearl or Raven Metallic, with Screamin' Eagle graphics inspired by the bikes Harley is racing in the King of the Baggers series. Because this is a special year for CVO, 25th Anniversary graphics have been included.
The motorcycle is listed by Harley at the time of writing with an asking price of $42,999. For reference, that's more than what Dodge is asking for the 2024 Durango GT.
2024 Harley-Davidson CVO Pan America
Photo: Harley-Davidson
As I said earlier, CVO has always had a soft spot for Grand American Touring bikes, and until this year that's pretty much all it worked on. Because a special birthday for the brand is on the way, higher-ups probably decided something special is advisable, and decided this year CVO will go for an adventure touring motorcycle as well.
Enter the 2024 Harley-Davidson CVO Pan America, the first factory custom adventure touring to come out of Milwaukee. An impressive title but one that sadly is not matched by the modifications made to the stock bike.
The stock bike would be the existing 1250 Special, and when I say stock, I really mean that. Despite its reputation for extreme transformations, CVO decided to keep "all of the features that have made the Pan America 1250 Special model a leading choice among discerning global Adventure Touring riders." And by keep I mean not modified in any way.
That means the motorcycle uses many of the parts you get when buying the regular 1250 Special, including the engine. That's right, the CVO Pan America is powered by the stock heart, the Revolution Max 1250, which boasts the exact same performance numbers we have on the stock version: 150 horsepower and 95 ft-lb of torque.
The semi-active front and rear suspension, the touchscreen display, the selectable ride modes, and even the Daymaker adaptive headlamp have all been carried over from the regular model, with only minor tweaks.
There are, however, a number of modifications made to the Pan America to make it worthy of the factory custom title. The most noticeable is the color scheme of the bike, black over Legendary Orange. But it's not the only one.
CVO created and fitted on the Pan America special tubeless laced wheels, a Screamin' Eagle quick-shifter, and an auxiliary LED light on the front. The cases installed at the rear, both the top one and the sides, also wear CVO branding. The 2024 Harley-Davidson CVO Pan America adopted the Skyline OS as well.
Photo: Harley-Davidson
Just like its companion for the 2024 model year, this breed of adventure touring will become available by the end of January. The price for it has been set at $28,399, which is about $10k more than the standard Pan America 1250 Special. It's also more than the price of the 2024 Ford Maverick XLT, since we're at it comparing apples and oranges. But hey, at least this is the cheapest CVO bike you can get your hands on.
The above is all there is to it in terms of CVO novelties for the 2024 model year. Harley will continue to offer the models it introduced in 2023, meaning the factory custom offering includes a total of four models.
The returning bikes in these special stables are the CVO Road Glide and Street Glide I mentioned earlier. Even if they are one year old already, they still remain impressive, because the tech deployed on them last year is truly something.
The pinnacle of the CVO Glide range is the Milwaukee-Eight VVT 121 engine, the largest of its kind fitted on a bike right off the factory floor (the Screamin' Eagle 131ci is bigger, but that's a crate engine).
The powerplant brought with it 9.5 percent more horsepower and eight percent more torque than the 117ci usually fitted on the Street and Road Glides, meaning a total of 115 hp and 189 Nm of torque.
The bikes also offer an airbox with a 4-liter volume, 50 percent more than in the Heavy Breather used on previous CVO builds, and an exhaust system that packs a 4.5-inch muffler (increased from 4 inches).
The two bikes were also the first to offer selectable ride modes in the CVO range: Road, Sport, Rain, and Custom – the same ones now offered on the Road Glide ST. The Skyline OS is also on the table for these two motorcycles.
So, 2024 has, so far, four Harley-Davidson factory custom to offer. Here they are, pricing included (valid at the time of writing):
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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