Piglet-Inspired Fast Johnnie Brings Muscle Car Flavor to Three Harley-Davidson Models

Back in the 1920s, at a time when motorcycle racing was still enjoying its infancy years, a Harley rider named Ray Weishaar had one strange way of celebrating his racing victories. A member of a racing team called Wrecking Crew, Weishaar sometimes did his victory laps with a piglet sitting on top of his motorcycle's fuel tank.

The piglet became somewhat of a phenomenon of the era, and a Wrecking Crew team mascot, for that matter. It was even given a name, Johnnie, and it's said to be at the origin of the world-famous Hog moniker that's been tied for years to anything that's related to the Milwaukee motorcycle maker.

Separately, Harley-Davidson has been running for the past couple of years a limited motorcycle run called Enthusiast Motorcycle Collection. We're talking about usual road models modified to celebrate "the diversity of our community and the unique backgrounds and interests of the people within it." And in 2023, the Enthusiast Motorcycle Collection is all about that piglet we mentioned earlier.

This week Harley announced the launch of something called Fast Johnnie. We're talking about a limited run of just 2,000 globally available Low Rider ST, Street Glide ST, and Road Glide ST bikes that feature the piglet character on the left side of the fuel tank. It's kind of the same design we presently get to see on the factory-backed Harleys racing in the MotoAmerica King of the Baggers series.

The character would probably not have been enough to warrant a new run of bikes in a series that in past years included things like the G.I. Enthusiast, so Harley paired that with something one doesn't usually see on motorcycles: a tribute to muscle cars of the 1960s and 1970s and their racing exploits.

Said tribute comes in the form of a special paint job, in this case Celestial Blue running white racing stripes front to end. To blend in with the new color scheme, the fuel tank no longer features the Harley-Davidson lettering on its right side, but only the brand's shield logo. All of the above changes can be seen across the range, but there are several distinct features unique to each of the three bikes of the series.

The color scheme was chosen, according to Brad Richards, Vice President of Design and Creative Director at Harley-Davidson, because it's meant to appeal to today's adults that came of age during the glory decades of American carmaking. As for the colors themselves, blue and white in various combinations were all the rage back then, and that's why they were chosen.

"The Celestial Blue base color selected for Fast Johnnie recalls a popular tone from the muscle car era. For the graphic striping, we created a custom white color formulated to authentically reflect the era, executed in a classic thin-wide-thin pattern on the sides and top of the motorcycle bodywork. The look is a nod to pure Americana," says the executive.

We'll start with the Low Rider ST. In its case, the Celestial Blue with custom white stripes on the body is accompanied by the Enthusiast Collection logo on rear fender. No mechanical changes have been made to the bike, and it still rocks Milwaukee-Eight 117 V-Twin engine in its frame. In its stock form, the Low Rider ST is selling from $22,199, but you should add an extra $1,900 on top of that for the Enthusiast paint job.

Second in line is the Street Glide ST Fast Johnnie, which is basically your standard bagger only wearing these special colors. Priced at $29,999 in stock form, it gets a $2,900 price bump when this special color scheme is chosen.

Unlike the Low Rider, though, this one can be customized with a series of accessories, including a color-matched King Tour-Pak luggage carrier, Chopped Tour-Pak luggage carrier, and saddlebag speaker lids.

The Road Glide ST comes with the same paint job in blue and white and the same position of the Collection logo. It too is mechanically identical to its stock sibling, down to the Milwaukee-Eight 117 V-Twin engine that powers it. It too is subject to the same kind of color-matched accessories as the Street Glide.

All three Harley-Davidson Fast Johnnie models are already listed by the American bike maker on its configurators. If you plan on getting one you should hurry. As said, there will be only 2,000 models available globally. That's the combined number, not for each of the three, but Harley does not say how many have been allocated to each of the models.