Photo: Nine Hills
Harley-Davidson is a very old bike maker. That may have some people believe everything the company ever did was successful, otherwise it wouldn't have made it this far. But the reality couldn't be further from the truth. Both as a business direction and as far as its products are concerned, the American company took a lot of wrong turns down the decades.
As far as motorcycles are concerned, such a wrong turn is the Rocker. A Softail by design, it came about in 2008. It should have been successful, like many other Softails, but for some reason it wasn't, and just three years later, in 2011, Harley pulled the plug.
It's not exactly clear how many of them were produced during this time, but you can still stumble upon one every now and then, coming into the spotlight either as stock machines (very cherished in some circles), or as custom builds like the one we have here.
The project is the work of a Polish shop that goes by the name Nine Hills. These guys don't like the Rocker in its factory incarnation either, calling it "boringly cut" and with a "very debatable beauty." Yet the Rocker does have a lot of potential, if one only knows how to bring it all to light. And this custom is such an attempt.
Made in 2009, just one year after the breed was introduced, this Rocker was re-built in an old-school custom style, and the elements and colors used on it make that perfectly clear. Brown and black all over, and with a yellow headlight for good measure, the bike is not radically different than it used to be, but enough to please the eye a lot more than it did.
Nine Hills says the idea was to create a chopper-style build, and that may be so in some respects: the bike now looks longer and more determined, there is a saddlebag on the right side for longer trips, and wheels taken off a Breakout to make the build's origins a bit more confusing.
Everywhere one looks, some sort of Roland Sands Design accessory or part stands out. The most impressive such bit is the exhaust system, a stainless steel 2-in-1 piece of hardware that was left as is, in a bid to give the build a bit of ruggedness.
All the metal bits perfectly blend, visually speaking, with the brown leather used on the seat and saddlebag. The look achieved is one somewhat warmer than what the Rocker originally had going for it.
In this, brown form the bike is called Obsession, and it was put together a few years back by Nine Hills. The bike's current whereabouts and price of build are not known.
It's not exactly clear how many of them were produced during this time, but you can still stumble upon one every now and then, coming into the spotlight either as stock machines (very cherished in some circles), or as custom builds like the one we have here.
The project is the work of a Polish shop that goes by the name Nine Hills. These guys don't like the Rocker in its factory incarnation either, calling it "boringly cut" and with a "very debatable beauty." Yet the Rocker does have a lot of potential, if one only knows how to bring it all to light. And this custom is such an attempt.
Made in 2009, just one year after the breed was introduced, this Rocker was re-built in an old-school custom style, and the elements and colors used on it make that perfectly clear. Brown and black all over, and with a yellow headlight for good measure, the bike is not radically different than it used to be, but enough to please the eye a lot more than it did.
Nine Hills says the idea was to create a chopper-style build, and that may be so in some respects: the bike now looks longer and more determined, there is a saddlebag on the right side for longer trips, and wheels taken off a Breakout to make the build's origins a bit more confusing.
Everywhere one looks, some sort of Roland Sands Design accessory or part stands out. The most impressive such bit is the exhaust system, a stainless steel 2-in-1 piece of hardware that was left as is, in a bid to give the build a bit of ruggedness.
All the metal bits perfectly blend, visually speaking, with the brown leather used on the seat and saddlebag. The look achieved is one somewhat warmer than what the Rocker originally had going for it.
In this, brown form the bike is called Obsession, and it was put together a few years back by Nine Hills. The bike's current whereabouts and price of build are not known.
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