To comprehend the mainstream of American motorcycle touring, you have to understand the 2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra. Just how predominant are Harley tourers on US roads? Since 2000, Harley-Davidson has sold over 2 million touring bikes, and according to Jochen Zeitz, outgoing president, chairman, and CEO of Harley-Davidson, last year, The Motor Company held 74.5% of the US market share of the touring segment. Although it may be observation bias, you’d be forgiven for feeling like you see more Harley-Davidson tourers on the road than all other motorcycle models combined.The Road Glide Limited and the Ultra Limited, Harley’s full-dress touring models, equipped with top cases, generous pillion accommodations, fairing lowers, and large windscreens, have long been the apotheosis of American touring. Yet for 2025, they’ve been dropped from the lineup, leaving the 2025 Street Glide Ultra with some big shoes to fill.Related: Top Touring Motorcycles in 2025

To get a fuller picture of the Street Glide Ultra’s place in the larger H-D narrative, I visited the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee for a personal tour of the collection and of its extensive archives. And to get a fuller picture of the mainstream of American motorcycle touring, I clocked some 2000 miles on my way to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, where 537,459 riders (according to the South Dakota Department of Transportation) were about to descend for the 85th anniversary.What’s Old Is New Again

The Harley-Davidson Museum is a 130,000-square-foot complex in the heart of downtown Milwaukee, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Since the early days of the company, Harley culled motorcycles from the production line in order to preserve them for history’s sake. Thanks to the work of collectors, restorers, and archivists, the museum’s collection is able to give a complete account of Harley-Davidson’s doings over the past 122 years. One of my favorite exhibits is the engine room where 24 engines from The Motor Company’s history are mounted like taxidermy trophies. Some, like the opposed twins, are barely associated with the brand. Others, like the Revolution engine, failed to gain enduring mass appeal. But occupying pride of place along the center of the wall are the Big Twins—10 of them—beginning with the F-Head and ending with the contemporary Milwaukee-Eight, a version of which powers the new Street Glide Ultra. The display drives home two points: 1) the Big Twin is the heart line through H-D history, and 2) a key to H-D’s success has been careful, iterative change. The engines aren’t the only hallmarks in the H-D universe. Elsewhere in the museum, I observed the Street Glide Ultra’s tank shape reflected in a 1936 EL, the outline of its fairing on a ’70s Electra Glide stored in a backroom, and the echoes of its pulled-back handlebar on a 1934 VLD Side-Valve. Considering the Grand American Touring category is so established—and so loved—it’s no surprise that the Street Glide Ultra is more an evolution than a revolution, even if its batwing fairing, which debuted on the 2023 CVO Street Glide bagger, received the biggest styling update since Project Rushmore in 2014.

If the new-look batwing fairing and large Tour-Pak top case aren’t a dead giveaway that the Street Glide Ultra is the next generation of American touring, the “117” scrawled across the air cleaner should be. In place of the Twin-Cooled Milwaukee-Eight 114 engine used by the outgoing Road Glide Limited and Ultra Limited, the Street Glide Ultra uses the Milwaukee-Eight 117, which produces a claimed 105 hp and 130 lb.-ft. of torque. On Cycle World’s dyno, a 2024 Street Glide’s M-8 117ci produced 90.4 hp at 4550 rpm and 116.6 lb.-ft. of peak torque at 2850 rpm. In addition to the larger bore which boosts displacement, the 117 has liquid-cooled heads with improved intake and exhaust flow.To complement the updated batwing, the Street Glide Ultra has new fairing lowers, a tall windscreen, and larger fork-mounted air deflectors. The 12.3-inch touchscreen display is a welcome carryover from last year’s Glides, as are the four selectable ride modes. The redesigned fairing houses two 5.25-inch fairing-mounted speakers powered by a new 200-watt amplifier. On the performance side, H-D equipped the SG Ultra with dual Showa emulsion shocks. Harley claims the Street Glide Ultra is 49 pounds lighter than the Ultra Limited.Starting at $30,749, the Street Glide Ultra costs $1750 less than the outgoing Ultra limited.The Milwaukee-Eight 117 Engine

At the museum, I had the pleasure of being given a tour by Bill Jackson, manager of archives and heritage services. Jackson, who himself recently purchased a new Street Glide Ultra, is first and foremost a historian, so much of his curiosity is related to the motivating factors that drive human action.While I admired the sculpted valve covers of a Knucklehead on a 1940 EL, Jackson opined: “Is it happenstance—and I think it is—that people came to love the specific cadence, the sound that’s identified with Harley?” The next day, I picked up my SG Ultra press bike at 3700 West Juneau Avenue, Harley’s home since 1906. As I thumbed the starter, the motor cranked over with a breathy, rhythmic chuffa-chuf-chuf before firing up and settling into the trademark rumble that, as Jackson alludes, has resonated with riders on a bone-deep level for a century or so.On the road, the first trait I appreciated was the Milwaukee-Eight 117’s flat torque curve. Like all of the best tourers, the meat of its torque curve is almost immediately accessible. The engine idles at about 1000 rpm and redline arrives at just 5500 rpm. The sweet spot of operation is about halfway between—peak torque measured on the CW dyno is at 2850 rpm—but the engine pulls smoothly from as low as 2000 rpm. Tall gearing, however, necessitates downshifting a gear or two to take advantage of the torque-rich powerband. Gearing is such that at 3000 rpm in third gear, the speedometer reads 45 mph. The upside is that top gear is tall, but not quite overdrive. Below 80 mph on the freeway, five gears are all you need.

Humming along in top gear on Interstate 90 across Wisconsin, the M-8 was remarkably smooth. The floating rubber mats on the floorboards are surely designed to damp vibration, but they’ve got the easiest job of any part on the motorcycle. When accelerating through the rev range, that 5500 rpm redline comes pretty quickly as torque tapers off gently, but the 117 can hardly be called a hot rod. While it has more than adequate torque to launch itself past loafing Suburbans, the Ultra definitely doesn’t exhibit any of the King of the Baggers pretensions that other models possess. I wouldn’t call it fast. I’d call it fast enough.Twisting the throttle reminded me of the first time I rode a Harley when I was a teenager. At the time, the V-Rod was huge news in the motorcycle world, so my dad and I, dyed-in-the-wool sportbike riders, rode to our local H-D dealership for a test ride. After hopping off, my dad declared: “Great engine, but the throttle cable feels like a rubber band!” Twenty-odd years later, Dad’s verdict remains spot on: The Street Glide Ultra’s throttle (now ride-by-wire) feels like it’s connected to the throttle bodies with a rubber band. The initial touch of the throttle is a tad abrupt and then any semblance of immediacy wanes. The softer throttle responses of Road and Rain modes only exaggerate the feel. The thing is, the throttle feel isn’t conspicuous given its interplay with the clutch and gearbox. The Ultra uses a cable clutch; the pull is pretty heavy and there’s a good bit of slop past the friction zone which gives a somewhat imprecise feel at the lever—though clutch feel is almost inconsequential to get off the line given the ample low-end torque and the high inertia of the engine internals. Likewise, shifting gears is a bit clunky and lacks the precise feedback that characterize the best gearboxes. However, the overall effect of the cooperation of the throttle, clutch, and gearbox—let’s call it “synergistic coordination”—gives the impression that it was intentionally engineered that way: engineered to feel like a Harley in other words.

In a display case at the museum, there’s a clay mockup of the new batwing fairing. Above it, a quote from H-D Vice President of Design Brad Richards reads: “We want to deliver all that customers expect. We want to do it better than the competition and we want to do it in our own way that’s unique. It has to be the Harley way.”The Harley way may have been happenstance, as Jackson opined, 100 years ago. These days, it’s anything but.Ergonomics and Aerodynamics

When I left Milwaukee, the Midwest was suffocating under an Extreme Heat Warning. To get as much windblast as possible, I stuck to the interstate, crossing the Mississippi River into Minnesota where variegated fields of corn and soybeans hemmed me in until the open plains of South Dakota where I found a hotel in Mitchell, some 525 miles away from H-D HQ.I wouldn’t say a 500-plus-mile day is nothing on a Street Glide Ultra—especially in 95-degree heat—but the accumulation of miles is significantly less fatiguing than on the majority of motorcycles. It starts with the riding position and a redesigned saddle that features new padding material and a revised shape that “rotates the rider’s hips to a neutral position relative to the spine.” I never gave it a second thought, which is the highest praise a saddle can earn.

Harley-Davidson engineers used computational fluid dynamics to design the batwing fairing, the fairing lowers, and the touring windscreen—which is 4 inches taller than the Street Glide’s screen. The company claims that “subjective helmet buffeting” is reduced by 60% compared to the 2024 Ultra Limited. To minimize helmet buffeting—um, subjectively speaking, I found it necessary to open the vent beneath the windscreen to allow air to penetrate the negative pressure behind the bubble.

The benefits of the Street Glide Ultra’s big fairing are manifold—and I certainly appreciated how it shielded me from the rain I encountered later in the week—but in extreme heat it’s an Achilles’ heel. Fortunately, Harley did a great job of incorporating airflow management via adjustable fork-mounted deflectors and vents in the fairing lowers. Although they’re little more than credit card-sized pieces of plastic, they do an amazing job of directing air. The dark art of aerodynamics, devastatingly effective in generating grip around a racetrack, here is employed to keep road warriors as comfortable as possible. Between the seat, the feet-forward riding position, and the aerodynamics—in addition to the vibe-free running—there are few motorcycles as well adapted to the Great American Road Trip. Infotainment and Rider Aids

Just as important as a comfy seat on a long road trip is the ability to easily access navigation, keep in touch with family back home, and listen to music or the Cycle World Podcast to prevent the mind from wandering on the straight expanses of a Midwestern freeway. While much of the motorcycle world is still behind the times when it comes to smartphone integration, Harley offers a master class in living in the modern age. Not only does the Ultra have a huge 12.3-inch TFT display, but it’s a touchscreen. On top of that, the touchscreen is operable when on the go, though there’s also an array of handlebar switches should riders prefer to keep their hands on the bars. The display supports wireless CarPlay but not Android Auto. Since having CarPlay is still the exception rather than the rule in the motorcycle world, using it feels novel. I particularly loved the ease of using the voice recognition system to initiate calls, send a text, or input a new destination into my navigation app. As far as I’m concerned, the only negative about Harley’s integration of CarPlay is that it hides tripmeters, tire pressure monitors, etc. It’ll be difficult to go back to using a phone mount on my own motorcycles.

These days, blaring music on the highway for your fellow man to overhear is apparently a social norm, so a decent sound system is a requirement on an American tourer. The Street Glide Ultra uses two 5.25-inch fairing-mounted speakers powered by a new four-channel, 200-watt amplifier. Off the bike, the speakers are insanely, obnoxiously loud, but at 80 mph on the highway, they don’t offer enough fidelity to articulate, say, the quiet melodies of Satie’s “Gymnopédies,”but if you’re sticking with “Highway to Hell,” the sound quality is passable since Bon Scott sounds like he’s chewing a mouthful of gravel regardless of the quality of your hi-fi system. For the rest of the civilized world who want to keep their music to themselves, it takes a few quick button presses or touchscreen pokes to select “headset” from the “audio routing” submenu.

In a first for Harley’s full-dresser line, the Street Glide Ultra has four selectable ride modes (Road, Sport, Rain, Custom) that adjust throttle response, traction control intervention, and torque output. Rider aids include:By today’s standards, at least for a $30,000 motorcycle, these rider aids feel like the bare minimum. The Indian Roadmaster PowerPlus, the Street Glide Ultra’s chief competition, for instance, features a rear radar that facilitates blind-spot detection, tailgate warning, and rear collision warning, while the latest sport- and adventure-tourers from Europe additionally feature adaptive cruise control and electronically adjustable suspension. Like EIC Hoyer, I too wonder what it would be like to have a version of the Pan America’s adaptive ride height system that increases ride height/suspension travel when the bike is underway. And, given the significant wingspan of that fairing, surely H-D engineers could find a neat spot to tuck away a radar’s little black box. Chassis, Suspension, and Handling

After two days of highway travel, the Street Glide Ultra had endeared itself to me for chewing up a thousand highway miles with ease. But I didn’t ride to the Black Hills to stay on straight roads. The network of twisty pavement south of Sturgis offers some of the best riding on either side of the Mississippi. And here I was about to tackle it on Babe the Blue Ox, an 866-pound (claimed wet weight) behemoth with minimally adjustable suspension, axial brake calipers, and a 64-inch wheelbase. Couldn’t possibly be fun, could it?I wasn’t just dubious because of my own vestigial prejudice. I’d already discovered the limitations of 4.6-inch (front) and 3.0-inch (rear) suspension travel. On my first day on the road, I hit a seam on the highway that bottomed the suspension, nearly bouncing me onto the rear seat. Then there’s the axially mounted brakes. The only streetbike I’ve ever owned with axial calipers was my Honda CBR600F4i, and that was nearly 25 years ago—and it weighed less than half of the Street Glide Ultra. I couldn’t have been more surprised by the Street Glide Ultra’s handling.

The first corners I encountered in the heart of the Black Hills revealed the Street Glide Ultra’s amazingly nimble handling. Honest: It’s downright flickable with side-to-side transitions requiring just the slightest pressure on the bars. Soon, I was tossing it on its side with abandon and chuckling in my helmet as hard parts scraped at 31-degree lean angles. When leaned over, it holds its line with poise and stability, while requiring little coercion to adjust line midcorner. The steered weight of fork-mounted fairings have the tendency to make the front end feel disembodied from the rest of the bike, but the Street Glide Ultra felt generally immune to that trait. On the switchbacks of Needles Highway, the Street Glide Ultra lived up to its name, gliding through corners, floorboards scraping, the chassis just lapping it up. Some motorcycles give the impression that you need to grab them by the scruff of the neck and exaggerate your body language to get the best out of them. The Ultra is the opposite. The best way to ride it is to get out of its way; let the suspension work beneath the significant weight of the bike. By keeping my body upright, almost “disconnecting” from the bike and pushing the bars down flat-track-style, the big Glide danced through corners seemingly of its own accord.When people talk about the fun of riding slow bikes quickly, they’re usually referring to riding small-displacement motorcycles. Just like riding a small-displacement motorcycle, riding a big, heavy bike fast is entertaining because it’s easier to find its limitations.

And there are limitations. That’s in spite of improvements over the outgoing Road Glide Limited and Ultra Limited. Harley gave the SG Ultra dual Showa emulsion shocks, adjustable for preload in two stages. Removing the right pannier reveals a threaded collar on the shock that enables the rider to dial in “primary” preload for the bike’s typical load. There’s also a hydraulic preload adjuster designed to fine-tune preload on the fly. The idea is to set sag at the dealership to accommodate your typical load, and then use the remote adjuster to account for up to 150 pounds of load. The Ultra’s 49mm Dual Bending Valve front suspension carry over from previous tourers. Despite the new rear suspension, there’s only so much the suspension can cope with. When I hit a bump midcorner, the bike bottomed out hard, scraping the floorboards in protest. Limited travel and relatively soft damping mean the suspension can respond harshly when they’re pushed past their happy place. Despite the soft damping, there’s minimal fork dive under hard braking because of the long wheelbase.I should add: “hard braking” is relative. The front arrangement uses dual four-piston axially mounted calipers and 320mm discs, while the rear uses a single four-piston caliper and a 300mm disc. There’s no way around it: The brakes are spongy and require a firm squeeze. Ultimately, the suspension-braking relationship is another example of synergistic coordination: If the front brakes were any stronger, they’d transfer too much weight to the front end, which would quickly blow through fork travel.

The upshot is, again, that riders of average skill can access the totality of the bike’s performance. For example, when trail-braking into corners, rather than use a small percentage of available braking performance like maybe I would on a sportbike, I used everything the brakes had to offer, squeezing them hard before backing off to let the suspension gently rebound as lean angle increased. Which is another way of saying, I was having an absolute blast.Look past the spec sheet, and doff your cap to Harley-Davidson engineers. The Street Glide Ultra has no business handling as well as it does. Maybe it sounds like I’m trying to justify less than optimal performance. If I am, it’s because I believe it can be justified. Catching the Feeling

Harley-Davidson built the Pan America, the Sportster S, and the LiveWire, in part at least, to show the world the prowess of its engineers and its readiness to be put in the dock of public appeal. In that way, those models were an admission that Harley-Davidson doesn’t exist in a vacuum.The 2025 Street Glide Ultra, on the other hand, asserts that Harley-Davidson doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it is the vacuum. How else to explain why millions of riders have been willing to pay $30,000 or so for a motorcycle that would be considered only moderately equipped if it were in another category? In the eyes of some non-Harley riders, the performance per dollar quotient makes for some ugly math, but the assumption that the Street Glide Ultra’s merit can be judged purely on a performance basis misses the plot. Harley-Davidson is a cultural phenomenon. As such, the Bar Shield on the Street Glide Ultra’s cam cover gives it license to be itself, to defy comparison. For my part, it didn’t take many of the 2000 miles I spent on it to realize that I didn’t really miss “better” performance. Maybe part of embracing the Harley Way, as VP of Design Brad Richards calls it, is understanding that “objectively better” (i.e., higher-performing) doesn’t always equate to “experientially better.”

It wasn’t long before I gained a fondness for the synergistic coordination between the spongy brakes, clunky-ish gearbox, limited-travel suspension, and less than precise feeling controls. I enjoyed how executing quick, smooth gearshifts required exaggerated movements of my right wrist, my two left fingers, and my left toe. The Street Glide Ultra is big and heavy and not that fast. But it’s tremendously endearing. It’s not diminished by arguments suggesting it should be something that it isn’t. An adventure bike doesn’t need to be like a sportbike; a supermoto doesn’t need to be like a streetfighter. Because each is its own thing. Because different is good. It’s about how a motorcycle makes you feel, and the Street Glide Ultra gives a lot of feels. Even still, Harley-Davidson knows some riders want “objectively better.” For those willing to shell out an additional *cough* $15,000, Harley’s CVO Street Glide has a more powerful VVT 121 engine, uprated suspension, and higher-performance Brembo M4.32 brake calipers. Add a Tour-Pak top case from the accessory catalog and you’ve got a DIY hopped-up SG Ultra, more or less. In the future, it’d be great to see Harley give its customers the option of spec’ing its touring models with high-tech features like electronic suspension and adaptive cruise control. That’s gotta be in the works, right?You don’t need to see the 2 million-plus H-D tourers sold in the last quarter century to know Harley defines the American touring market. But watching thousands of motorcycles arrive in South Dakota, the vast majority of them Harley-Davidsons—and many of those touring models like the Street Glide Ultra—gives the impression that Milwaukee’s Big Twin tourer is the seam that holds together the fabric of American motorcycling. It feels like every other corner of the American motorcycling scene is, pardon the expression, small potatoes. That may not be an entirely accurate depiction of reality, but if nothing else, it feels that way. And after six days of riding the Street Glide Ultra, I can say that feel is nothing to scoff at.2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra Specs

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