The most important Harley-Davidson model since 1970? Hard to argue against the 1971 FX Super Glide. It’s the first “factory custom” and the detonator for the explosion of what became the cruiser market. Even if the trademark boattail bodywork proved to be unpopular and was removed from the 1972 model, this bike paved the way for a period of growth for Harley and connected it with customers–and the culture–in a new way.It also likely saved the company at a time of great change and growth in competition. Certainly the lightweights in H-D’s lineup from Aermacchi helped as the Japanese made huge strides in the US during the ’60s, but in 1970 Harley had just touring bikes and the Sportster to take on a rapidly changing big-bike market.

While Harley owned heavyweight touring, the bikes were considered not so much nostalgic as dated. The Sportster, meanwhile, was the sporty bike that had been taking on the British since 1957.

But the British were no longer the problem (and not long for the motorcycle market at all), as Honda had released the inline-four CB750 in 1969 and Kawasaki was right behind with the Z1. The relevance of the Sportster as an American “superbike” was ending.Enter a Young Harley-Davidson DesignerA young designer not too long out of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, had seen what owners and custom builders had been doing to The Motor Company’s bikes as the custom scene exploded in the ’60s, and he made the leap with the FX, which combined the 74-cubic-inch-powered FL touring chassis with the light and lithe Sportster front end, all the way down to the headlight eyebrow. That touring chassis was stripped down as much as possible, even removing the electric starter, making the new bike kick-only. And so an Electra Glide became the Super Glide.That young designer was Willie G. Davidson, hired by Harley in 1963 and doing the FX as his first “whole” bike.“What’s incredibly special about Willie is his ability to recognize culture and weave that into the product,” says Björn Shuster, head of design at Harley-Davidson. “You think about choppers and how these guys were swapping bits and pieces to change the attitude of the motorcycle, and I think it just taps into Willie’s ability to notice that, pick up on it, and really leverage it, to take this FL and be like, ‘Man, this would look really cool if I put a slimmed down Sportster front end on it.’ And he took all of these extra touring accessories off of it and just made it a more slimmed-down, pure motorcycle. And the process of doing that drastically changed its appearance, its proportion, and its attitude. “And, you know, that’s a really unique moment because it is kind of the birth of this entire segment that has kind of more or less shaped American motorcycling for the last 55 years in terms of what a cruiser is.” Behind the Design of the New Super GlideWhich is why, 55 years later, Harley has brought back the Super Glide, and for the first time on the Softail platform. The $15,999 Special Edition FXD is limited to 2500 numbered units for the US and Canadian markets only.

The original FX with solid-mount Big Twin led to the Dyna in 1991 with a rubber-mounted engine and a new platform, so going Softail may alarm the purists a bit, but you can’t argue with the technical aptitude of the single-shock chassis of Harley’s current Big Twin cruiser platform. Nonetheless, I had to ask Shuster if Harley had considered at all using the current twin-shock rubber-engine-mount touring platform and stripping it down in the spirit of the original FX. And perhaps a kickstarter too?“A contemporary Softail is closer in its overall stance in proportion to an original FX,” Shuster replied. “You know, just like everything—whether it’s motorcycles, cars, airplanes—has continued to grow over the years. And so leveraging that Softail gets us closer to that proportion that we were really aiming at.”Why not boattail, such the iconic image of the time?

“As a designer, I really appreciate it,” Shuster says. “It reminds me of some of the automotive trends that you would see at the time—think about like in a Bertone car or something like that. And then the overt proportion of the boattail, you know, Willie was clued in.

“Think about the Tracy body kits and all the crazy things being done just using Bondo in garages to form choppers and king and queen seats with all this form.

“I think he was tapping into that in a production sense with the boattail and certainly looking for a way to visually put an exclamation point on like, ‘This is not an FL.’ But the sales figures did not lie that year. It did so poorly that they quickly were like, whoops. And unfortunately, you know, a lot of that fiberglass bodywork made its way into dustbins, which makes people cringe today.”

If no boattail, what makes this 2026-and-a-half Harley a Super Glide? “First and foremost I’m going to go with the larger fuel tank because it gives me that iconic teardrop shape,” Shuster says. “I’m going to go with the center console, the gauge mounted up there to get that profile and that silhouette. You know, we’re going to change some of the finishes around. It’s got to have laced wheels, you know, and then the clear homage to the sparkle-white paint–we’ve got our white onyx pearl, it’s got a lot of flake in it.”

The red and blue graphics on that 5.0-gallon tank and fenders inspired by the original Super Glide anchor the “first-order impact,” and, of course, there is the return of chrome, and lots of it.True to Harley-Davidson’s long expertise with paints and finishes, the chrome is knock-out deep and the paint is the same. There is a team called CMFG, or Color, material, Finish and Graphics (“We love our acronyms”) and between this team and an unequalled supplier base the motorcycles make an emotional impression few other makers are able to match.

“That connection that you have with your bike,” Shuster says, “there’s probably some kind of psychology around how it’s forging your level of attraction, because that’s what we want. You want people to fall in love with their motorcycle. When you can fall in love with something, it just cements that desirability. And I think we’ve all been there, right? When you really have that connection with a bike, you just, you know it. Immediately, you know, like, I gotta have that. And that’s really the goal of my team. We’re trying to create that.”

We called this story the “Return of the Super Glide,” but maybe it should have been the “Re-Return of the Super Glide,” because H-D brought it back in 2006, marked in the pages of Cycle World by Cook Neilson riding it from his New England home to Milwaukee to meet with Willie G. and give us a proper American roadtrip on one of the most American motorcycles ever conceived. Neilson wrote the first road test of the bike for Cycle magazine, the cover for which read, “Harley-Davidson’s Outrageous Super Glide.”Neilson said of the Super Glide and its 74-cubic-inch Shovelhead, “The bike flies. The bike handles. The bike will not stop.” Adding that the single-leading-shoe front brake from the much lighter Sportster “faded like an echo.”2026.5 Super Glide On the RoadThe 2026.5 version has the essential Softail underpinnings, so its counterbalanced 117-cubic-inch Milwaukee-Eight and six-speed transmission make it fly, the stiff chassis and taut damping make it handle, and the single 300mm Brembo front disc brake and 292mm rear do a solid job of hauling it down from high speed with not even an echo of fade.

It’s a decent 75-mph motorcycle, but it’s even better at 65 on a lazy winding backroad. “Fists in the wind” mini-apes are, perhaps, spiritually a good riding position, but physically, the eternal pullup is eternally there if you try to grind interstate for any length of time. But back down the speed and take the long way, and the narrowness of the wheels and chassis give it some real agility. The suspension tune and 30 degree rake/6.2-in. trail make it stable, even at high lean angles made possible by the mid-mounted foot controls. If you are shorter of arm than this 6-foot-2 gorilla, full-lock turns will likely challenge your reach a bit. Rider aids are here, as the release reads: And Rain, Road, and Sport ride modes make a difference in engine response, but thankfully there is no TFT touchscreen; the small LCD window at the bottom of the analog speedo gives you access to all the bike information. I admit the USB-C plug on the left side of the steering head was handy.

As I parked it in late afternoon light to absorb the stance, color, and finishes, the bobbed rear fender struck me as more Street Bob than original Super Glide, as are the mini-apes, but I conceded for the current customer and trends, the Super Glide does a great job of bringing the feelings. Still, I am shopping for a different handlebar, and I’d do my damnedest to get a Sportster eyebrow mounted on that small, chromed headlight.

Harley has leaned into the 2-into-1 exhaust on the Softails because, typically, the combined, bigger muffler volume on two big cylinders helps get the bike through noise and tailpipe emissions testing. While it’s not a dead-ringer for the 2-into-1 of the original FX, the new Super Glide’s system does a very good job of recalling the exhaust used on the 1977 FXS Low Rider, one of the SG’s offspring and a huge seller on its debut.

Recent 117 ci engines run on our in-house Dynojet 250i dyno show 94 hp and 118 ft.-lb. of torque, refreshingly not far off the 98 hp and 120 ft.-lb. claimed by Harley for the Super Glide.Successfully SpiritualThe Super Glide in 1971 represented a huge, audacious change in the very spiritual position of Harley-Davidson, and, in fact, it tracked with the spiritual position of its designer, Willie G., who you can’t deny is genetically Harley-Davidson and who very much evolved with the company, leading it in this important way during a critical time.

“One of the things that I love right now at the Harley-Davidson Museum is an exhibit that talks about the history of design,” Shuster says. “And they show these photos of Willie where, you know, he’s young, and must have been right out of school at Art Center. He cut his teeth interning as an industrial design guy at Brooks Stevens [a famous designer/firm from Milwaukee], but he’s got the typical big thick-rimmed glasses and he’s wearing a suit. It’s very much like how the design staff would have looked at GM in 1962. And then just a few short years later when he comes into Harley and really takes on the role of head of design and forming our first styling and design department, you see how quickly his appearance starts to change.

“And I think it’s the effect of absorbing that cultural moment that was motorcycling in the late ’60s,” continued Shuster. “And Super Glide for me, and for us as a company, it’s that birth of recognizing that, oh, Harleys really are more than machines. There’s a uniqueness to this riding experience. And when you tap into that you’re starting to go beyond specification and you’re talking about intangible value.”

Perhaps the Super Glide was that moment where the intangible value started to come into focus as the cultural weight of the 45-degree Big Twin, its sound and feel, fed the generational loyalty and history of its customers in a new way. It certainly helped bridge the gap to the desperately needed Evolution Big Twin in 1984, launching an era of measured technical progress that backed up a spiritual, intangible experience with a very real tangible value.These tangibles and intangibles are embodied in the 2026.5 Super Glide. In some ways, its existence begs the question: what’s the next FX?

2026 ½ Harley-Davidson FXD Super Glide Specs