[c50tiger]

Agree 100% that their quality control has made tremendous advances in the past decade. As far as the older HD's still running... well, how many hours of labor have gone into getting them running and keeping them running? And it's my understanding that the origins of that thumping exhaust note were in poor engine design. Now it's designed, back then it was a side effect of an engine that would barely keep running at idle.

Bottom line, yes.. if I had $20k(US) sitting around gathering dust I'd buy one in a New York second. But I wouldn't give up my Suzuki to do it. Besides, twice in the past 6 weeks I've had people come up and compliment me on my great looking Harley. I just point at the Suzuki label on the rear fender and grin. The second guy stood there for a second, then said, "[explitive deleted], what'd you pay for that, about $17,000?" Ok, so he was a dumb@ss, but I told him to knock a bit over $10K off of that and he'd be in the right neighborhood.