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Harley-Davidson Oscar Is How You Hide a Long-Dead Softail Under Coats of Custom

Harley-Davidson’s Softail range of motorcycles is now almost four decades old. Born with the FXST in 1984, it grew into a successful line of two-wheeled machines that come with hidden shocks and other suspension elements, in a bid to give them an intentional old-school look.
Harley-Davidson Oscar 30 photos
Photo: Bad Land
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Trademarked by the Milwaukee company, the term Softail described over the years both successful models, like the Breakout, and others that were less so, like the Cross Bones.

The Rocker breed falls into the not-so-successful category as well. Born in 2008, this type of Softail proved immensely appealing for a very select group of customers, but not enough to convince the company to keep it in production past the 2011 model year. That’s just three years on the market, making these bikes very sought after in some circles.

One such circle is the custom industry, where whenever a Rocker surfaces it’s bound to catch all the attention. Sadly, that tends not to happen all that much these days, given the age of these machines. So you’ll have to look a bit to find a Rocker worth bringing under the spotlight.

We did, and came across on such a great build somewhere in Japan, in the garage of a crew that goes by the name Bad Land. The re-shaped two-wheeler, originally born in 2009, now hides there under the name Oscar, which it borrowed when the build was completed, in 2014.

We don’t know the reasoning behind the choice of the Oscar name, but we do know a thing or two about the bike itself, or more specifically about what makes it so special.

Starting from the ground up, we get German-sourced wheels, coming from a crew we’ve featured here before, No Limit Custom. The front one comes in at 21 inches, while the rear one is just 18 inches in diameter, but 260 mm wide.

The front wheel is held in place by an AS Industries fork, which continues further up with a Bad Land triple tree and a headlight made by the same crew. The handlebar visible over all that, but also the fenders spread over the two wheels, are born in Japan as well.

The stock engine of the bike draws the liquid it needs to run from a Bad Land fuel tank, and breaths out through a downward-facing exhaust system made in-house.

Oscar uses Performance Machine front and foot controls, and comes to a halt thanks to braking hardware supplied by the same company. Holding the whole thing in place at the rear is a Legend air suspension system.

As said, the Harley-Davidson Oscar (or bike number 75 in the Bad Land lineup) was first presented some eight years ago, so it’s impossible to know its current whereabouts. The price of the project is also a mystery, given how that’s a detail Bad Land was never willing to share.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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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.
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