In this episode, Editor Steve Mazzucchi talks about the all-new Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 (MSRP $17,319 to $19,999) adventure bike, which he just tested in the desert for several days. Steve also answers questions from GP followers, who asked about everything from riding dynamics to seat height. The Pan America 1250 is Harley's first bike of this kind, meaning purpose-built to tackle off-road terrain as well as it does flat pavement. This isn't the typical Harley you might picture when the brand comes to mind, and Steve, a newcomer to off-road motorcycling, thinks it's a very good entry into the segment.
The Pan America, which costs between $17,300 and $20,000 MSRP, is loaded with tech, and enters a segment where competition is fierce.
Nick Caruso:
This is The Gear Patrol Podcast. In this episode editor Steve Mazzucchi and I talk about the all new Harley-Davidson Pan America adventure bike, which Steve just tested in the desert for several days. And he answers questions from GP followers asking about everything from riding dynamics to seat height. The Pan America is Harley's first bike of this kind. One that is purpose built to tackle off road terrain, as well as it does flat pavement. And as you'll hear, it's not at all the typical Harley you might picture when the brand comes to mind. The Pan America, which costs between $17,300 and $20,000 MSRP is loaded with tech, and enters a segment where competition is fierce. There's a lot to cover. And now I kind of want a motorcycle license. I'm Nick Caruso, and I'm glad you're here. Let's get started. Yeah, so give us the rundown. What is the Pan America?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Sure, so the Pan America which has been in development for a while is Harley-Davidson's first foray into the adventure touring segment. These are bikes that can go both on road and off road and they kind of sit in the space between a dual sport bike and a standard road motorcycle, and are equally capable on multiple surfaces essentially.
Nick Caruso:
Between a touring bike or a road bike which is what Harley is most notable for in its past, chrome and leather and motorcycle gangs and old lawyers who want to let loose on the weekend. And the-
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. Somewhere between Sons of Anarchy and Wild Hogs, I guess you could say.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Wild Hogs, man, what a reference. Good old Tim Allen, and William H. Macy?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yes. William H. Macy and Travolta and Martin Lawrence.
Nick Caruso:
Oh gosh, what a crew. So in between what we know Harley for and Travis Pastrana, knobby tire, dirt track dirt biking, we're in the middle there. We can kind of do, or do both quite well.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yes. Yes.
Nick Caruso:
And the competition for Harley is pretty stiff in this category. They are late to this category, right? I mean, there are decades and decades old company, legendary, but other brands have ATV bikes already.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yes, yes. BMW introduced the first GS in I think the early '80s, and has been iterating on it ever since. And then there's also the Honda Africa Twin, is another big one. KTM is also quite well known for their adventure bikes. There's a few other brands that do them very well. So yeah, they are definitely getting into this game relatively late compared to some of these other brands.
Nick Caruso:
What I love about this segment is just how cool it looks. I mean, that's one of the big selling points, right? This is the defenders and the Tacoma TRD's of the motorcycle world. There's all sorts of equipment for these and you can actually, not just go off road, you can go overlanding essentially with a motorcycle like this.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I was going to mention that typically that the big differentiators between a dual sport bike and something more like the Pan America is that they are going to have a bigger engine. This particular one is a 1250 cc, which is pretty substantial. And usually, they also come with a luggage system and a windshield. Things that are handy if you're going to go on a long overland trip, for sure.
Nick Caruso:
Right, if you've got branches flapping you in the face.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Exactly. Well, I meant whether you're on the highway or off road. But actually, when I was testing this bike we did not have mirrors or a windshield for the day of off road training because you don't need them as much for that. But the other things that they do have that enable them for off road are long suspension travel and high ground clearance. Yeah, which are pretty critical factors.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, they're set up to absorb the dips and divots out there and the unpaved wilderness.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yes.
Nick Caruso:
We have several questions about right height and the equipment. But I want to start with a question we got from a follower on Instagram and I'm going to read it verbatim, and then we'll try to interpret it together.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Okay.
Nick Caruso:
And that is, "Who the hell keeps buying Harley's lol?" There wasn't even a question mark. I mean, we can touch on this really briefly. This is kind of alluding to what we spoke about a minute ago, is that Harley is very, very well known for their chrome sort of road bikes with few exceptions. They've toyed with electricity. The V-Rod was such a cool experiment back, what was it? 20 years ago now. So what's your thought there? Is Harley still relevant? Is this a thing?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Well, it's really funny that you say that because... And I should say that I'm fairly new to the motorcycle world relatively speaking. I got my license, I want to say in 2014 maybe, so it's not native to me per se. But I did a few years ago go to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. Not the superspreader event, but one a few years ago. And it was very interesting to see the demographic there because, I mean, it is mostly Harley-Davidson motorcycles and it is an aging crowd. It's like aging rockers.
Steve Mazzucchi:
You kind of prepped me on some of these questions we might get, so I did a little research and found a story just recently from The Motley Fool just from late April, which said that Harley-Davidson had its first good quarterly earnings report in four years. Well, it's their motorcycle sales jumped to their highest level in four years, I should say. And earnings per share nearly quadrupled for the first quarter of 2021. So they are kind of turning things around, and that the article also references the fact that this is without the full benefit of the Pan America.
Nick Caruso:
Oh, interesting.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. So that's not really factored into this because it's a very new bike. But it does sort of point to maybe the brand being headed in the right direction. They have a newish CEO named Jochen Zeitz. I don't totally know how to pronounce that, so. He was in the promo video, I'll tell you more about the event where I tested this, but he was in the promo video and had kind of like a young Richard Branson-y vibe.
Steve Mazzucchi:
But basically he sees Harley as this smaller more focused motorcycle brand aligned with its dealer interests that caters to the core customer but also hits new markets that are growing, such as the electric motorcycle that they kind of dipped into with the LiveWire and then adventure touring being another big segment that they're going after. So to answer the readers question, it's definitely still the kind of people that go to Sturgis, but there's also some new potential markets opening up with some of these new bikes that they are rolling out.
Nick Caruso:
Some new blood.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. And just to make sure that we're covering all our bases, the LiveWire is a fully electric motorcycle, correct?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yes.
Nick Caruso:
From Harley?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Is that a production bike?
Steve Mazzucchi:
It exists.
Nick Caruso:
It does, right?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. Yeah. And at the event that I attended, there was some promotional stuff for it. But I can't say that I've seen a ton of them on the road or anything. So yeah, I definitely think the Pan America is a much, much bigger play than the LiveWire.
Nick Caruso:
Right. Yeah. It's hard to imagine an aging Hells Angels gang rolling into town on silent electric bikes, right?
Steve Mazzucchi:
It's definitely a different vibe.
Nick Caruso:
This has been a highly anticipated bike. From what I gather, it's pretty good first launch in the ATV segment for Harley.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. And I mean, I personally can't. It's hard for me to address it as a sort of individual launch only, because my experience with adventure touring bikes is very limited. And by limited I mean this is the first time I've ridden one. But the event that I attended, which was a big launch event that they hosted in the Mojave Desert very recently, there were a lot of endemic motorcycle media people there. Including some people that I knew from other events. And they almost universally were stoked about this bike. And these are people that legit ride adventure bikes regularly.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Yeah. I watched a few videos, must have been from your event. There was a Harley backdrop where shooting some stuff.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
These guys who review these bikes have a certain heir to them. They're tough guys. They're motorcycle riders, right?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Which is kind of this fun stereotype, but also kind of true because you got to be tough to ride a bike. Is that right, Steve? Can just confirm that?
Steve Mazzucchi:
I'm proof that you don't have to be tough to ride a bike. I should say in fairness, it was mostly that sort of stereotype, but there was one female rider there who was a fricking awesome motorcyclist. And if you want to follow her on Instagram, she has the best Instagram name, Cylinderella.
Nick Caruso:
Cylinderella.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
I like that.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Her real name is Sanna, but she ripped and I was totally outclassed. So it's worth noting, I think you do have to be tough to ride an adventure touring bike but that doesn't mean you have to be a stereotypical motorcyclist per se. There's tons of people of all stripes out there.
Nick Caruso:
That's a pretty good segue, actually. The sort of hallmark feature of the Pan America is its adaptive ride height, which is sort of exactly what it sounds like for one, but it's pretty wild in this space. Can you give us a rundown of that, or what we're talking about with adaptive ride height and why it's important on this bike?
Steve Mazzucchi:
This is definitely the most distinguishing feature of the bike, I would say, in that no other bike really has this. And it is in line with the general goal of Harley-Davidson to really reach as many people as possible with this bike. Historically, it's very hard to get into adventure touring unless you do have a fairly long inseam or you are a pretty experienced motorcyclists. The reason being that, in order for them to have the high clearance that they need to go off road, that also means the seat is quite high. So for example, the GS and the Africa Twin, both-
Nick Caruso:
That's the BMW and the Honda?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They both have a seat height of about 33 and a half inches. The low seat position for the 1250 Special is also in that range. But there is what they call a reach seat, which is one inch lower and then adaptive ride height, which can lower it in another couple inches. And basically what adaptive ride height is, is that the shocks... I'm demonstrating this with my hands which is going to work real good for the podcast. But the shocks basically adjust to lower the seat when you start to roll into a stopping position enabling you to more easily put your feet on the ground. Because that's what's the toughest thing about these tall bikes, once you actually get rolling, anybody can ride them. I mean, you don't have to be tall. You're standing up most of the time anyway to properly control them and stay balanced, so it's not really an issue at that point. But it's when you come to a stop and you need to plant your feet, that having a seat that lowers the bike down helps a lot.
Nick Caruso:
It's almost like landing gear in a way. Right?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Do they catch you as you come to that complete stop?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Totally. Yeah. It felt very, I don't know, almost like this Robocopy vibe of [inaudible 00:13:55]. But it is pretty seamless and smooth and it does definitely make a difference. There were a number of riders that were my height or even shorter, and I'm 5'8” on a very good day.
Nick Caruso:
So that's something I wanted to touch on actually, is that I'm 6 feet even, and I have these long stick legs. Right. And you're talking about the height of the seat was 33,34 inches, something like that for a normal bike.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
My inseam is 33 if I want to break in my trousers, and that's really tall.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, and mine is 29. So to ride this bike, even when the seat is completely lowered, which brings it down closer to 30 and a half inches. If I want both my feet on the ground, I'm just on my very tippy toes essentially. What's funny is that, experience makes a big difference. I ran into another rider there I know named Justin who I run into at a previous bike event and he was actually on a BMW GS at that event, and he's a very experienced adventure rider. And he's my height but had no problem riding around on these things. And I know my own motorcycle is a Triumph Bonneville T100, has about a 29 inch seat. When I started ridding it, I literally did not feel comfortable unless I was wearing big old motorcycle boots. Now I can ride it in flip flops just because I am comfortable with it and I'm uncomfortable at a traffic light with just one foot supporting the bike. But that takes getting used to.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. So you get used to it, even if it's taller on these ATV bikes. Let's sidebar that, do you ride a motorcycle with flip flops? That seems psychotic.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Not regularly, but there was one time where I was visiting my family in Virginia and I had to move my bike out of a driveway onto a curb and I was wearing flip flops. And I was like, "I'm not going to put shoes on to do this." So it can be done.
Nick Caruso:
That's like when I don't put a shirt on to go move my car when it's alternate side parking in Brooklyn.
Steve Mazzucchi:
There you go.
Nick Caruso:
Okay, so that answers a few. I didn't do a very good job structuring that because a few of our followers asked about the right height. It's pretty significant feature of this bike. So people were asking what the height is and how easy the bike is to handle for shorter riders, or in your case, for kind of an average height individual. And it seems they've kind of crushed that, too. That's a big draw for anyone who wants to get into the segment and is on the fence about whether to pick up a Harley for the first time.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. I think that's going to help Harley a lot honestly, because while it was still a little bit tricky for me to get the hang of, I felt pretty comfortable on it by the end of the second day. I should mention, I think maybe I did already, but the event was out in the Mojave Desert and we did one day of true off road training with this group called RawHyde Adventures. Which sounds like a cliched name, but the guy who started the company is named Jim Hyde, so it's kind of a natural fit. And he was super cool guy, had some very sort of zen ideas about how to become comfortable riding these motorcycles. But anyway, yeah, I do think it makes it much more accessible. It's also relatively light.
Nick Caruso:
Oh, interesting.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. So the base model, the Pan America 1250, fully fueled it's 534 pounds. And then a fully fueled Special is 559. So for comparison, my Triumph Bonneville T100 which is just a pretty standard cafe racer is 500 pounds fully fueled, so it's not that far from there. And then on the flip side, if you look at say an Indian Chieftain is almost 800 pounds fully fueled. So that's a big cruiser. Yeah. So it's in between those spaces, and the weight is distributed differently of course. For the segment, it's still lighter than the base model GS, so that's...
Nick Caruso:
So cafe racer is pretty much a sort of a stripped down sort of sporty bike, and you're talking about the Chieftain which is a big cruiser you see people doing road trips on the highway in.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. The Chieftain has the giant speaker system and all the-
Nick Caruso:
Big fairing.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, huge fairing, heated hand grips, like the whole deal. Actually, I'm not sure about the heated hand grips. But yeah, it's fully dressed so to speak, whereas the Triumph Bonneville is a naked bike. It has no windshield. I mean, you can get a little windshield but the name comes from Italian dudes racing from cafe to cafe on these little city bikes essentially. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Right. So you've got the cafe racer to go between cafes and the Chieftain and its ilk with actual espresso machine on the back.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Pretty much exactly.
Nick Caruso:
So you don't need to. So that actually answers a couple questions. Namely, one we got this is, does it feel top heavy and does it feel comfortable to sit at a stop?
Steve Mazzucchi:
When I reviewed the Chieftain a couple years ago, and like I said, this bike weighs a couple 100 pounds more than the Pan America. But it has a 26-inch seat, so I have no problem ridding that thing at all and sitting at a traffic light forever, right? This thing, the weight is distributed differently definitely. They do-
Nick Caruso:
You higher. It's higher to the center of gravity?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, you definitely higher up. And I mean, they do kind of orient it to try to lower the center of gravity with the way that the engine is designed, but definitely you feel higher up. And also, when you're riding off road you're actually standing on the pegs most of the time, so you're very high up. Yeah. Which I didn't actually know until I went out to this program. I had seen promotional videos, but I thought people were just kind of showing off standing up on the pegs. But it's like, "Oh, no, we actually do that." Because say you're making a left turn in a situation where the ground is unstable, it's loose gravel or something, to keep the bike balanced you actually while you're standing on the pegs, you'll turn your right foot in and kind of stick your butt out to counter steer and counterbalance it as you're turning. Otherwise, the bike will go over in the dirt or the sand, so.
Nick Caruso:
Which you hate to see.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
You don't want to be doing that.
Steve Mazzucchi:
No.
Nick Caruso:
Kind of the same principle also is riding a horse. It's also partially for shock absorption, I imagine, you can use your legs to-
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. You kind of stay loose up there even though you're like you may be, or at least I was, sometimes kind of stressed especially riding over sand which is very sketchy.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. It sounds terrifying.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. They-
Nick Caruso:
But good for flip flops if you're [crosstalk 00:21:29].
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. You're perfectly ready to just hit the beach, exactly. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
So speaking of moving around, we had a question, how does it do off the line? And you've alluded to the engine. Of course, the name of the bike itself, 1250, alludes to the size of the engine on this. But this is a new power plant for Harley, and it does have sort of a unique power delivery. Is that fair to say?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, yeah. The engine is all new, they didn't just pull. Even though it does have the classic V-Twin shape it's not something they just pulled out of another bike. They redesigned it from the ground up and it's really oriented toward having smooth low-end torque delivery and low-speed throttle control, which are things that help you when you're off-roading. You really, especially I felt the second element, the low speed throttle control a lot because you are sometimes when you're navigating stuff, you're not actually moving that fast. But I mean, you're moving fast enough to stay upright. But say you're going around a tight corner or something, you're going pretty slow when the ground is unstable, essentially.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. You don't want to kick that back and out or even come have a risk of it.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
I mean, that's basic off road or slippery surface driving dynamics even in a car or a truck, right? Whether you have a defender that you put into low crawl gears to go over rocks or you live in a snowy climate and you need to sort of roll on the throttle, that's really nice to have. But you thought it still had a lot of Pep.
Steve Mazzucchi:
I was pretty impressed. So basically we did this full off road training day and then the second day was about 150 miles of riding, most of which was on road. And then there was a big 15-mile of uninterrupted stretch of off road. And so, they swapped out the tires. We went from the knobbies to a more road friendly tire because we were also doing some twisties here and there. And yeah, I thought it was super fun on the highway, pretty fast. I mean, it's not a sport motorcycle, obviously. But it can move and it has multiple modes depending on the surface you're on and the conditions, and they range from sport which is a much tighter setup to some of the off road modes where you're going to engage more of the suspension.
Nick Caruso:
You're talking about modes, you don't have to take a wrench to think. This is an electronically selectable drive mode like you would have in a car, right?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. There's just a button on the right handlebar and it cycles you through the modes. And you can literally, as you're riding from the street to the dirt, switch from road to off road.
Nick Caruso:
I mean, that sounds crazy to me because as the car guy and stuff conceiving of how you can have five or six drive modes in a motorcycle that also has Robocop landing gear is wild.
Steve Mazzucchi:
It is pretty nuts. And I mean, there's this little touch screen and it allows you to eat been program the mode. So you can say, I want sport, but I actually want a little more given the suspension. So you can go into the sport mode and then customize it to loosen up the suspension, for example.
Nick Caruso:
That's amazing.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Which is pretty cool. And then there's off road but then there's also off road plus mode which allows you to disable some of the built in functions. Because it was so funny, the minute we started to learn about this bike, this guy Justin that I mentioned before was immediately asking "Well, how can we disable these, the link braking and the ABS and stuff?" Because depending what you're doing, it's sort of like, I'm trying to think of a good analogy. But it's almost like disabling the autopilot because you want to fly the plane yourself, right?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Especially for somebody like me who's very new to it, I kind of want the bike to correct my mistakes. But somebody who's much better at it, is going to want to just really have the full control, essentially. And so, you can basically set up. If you're taller and you don't need the adaptive ride height, you can disable that. Yeah. Because if you're experienced and you have a long inseam, you don't need the bike to lower down, you don't need to. So it's very customizable. That was one thing that really stuck out to me.
Nick Caruso:
That's neat. So you sort of answered a question that I was about to ask which is, all of these features, all of this tech that Harley's introduced on this bike, it sounds like it made it easier for you as a sort of an off road noob, right? It could be desirable for people who are very experienced, too. But specifically, as someone who's just starting out, maybe those things are super, super helpful.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, I definitely felt so. And I definitely felt I got better as I learned to kind of trust the bike more, because the bike was so much more capable than I was. I'm not great at this, but the bike is like, "What are you worried about?" "I got this, trust me." And so, you actually loosen up your grip a little bit and let the bike do its thing. And when we did this 15-mile stretch off road, the first day I wouldn't have felt real good about doing that because there were some sandy stretches, rocky stretches, ups and downs and some tight turns and stuff. And you're basically standing up the whole time, and by the end of it, my throat was like literally as dry as the desert. So I was like, "What am I doing here?" "Don't drop this bike in the sand." But there were a couple dicey moments, but the bike definitely was well equipped. And you probably know this from cars as well, when you get in trouble just hit the gas and try to shut out of whatever.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, that's an interesting thing. Because listeners, I used to be our automotive editor and reviewed cars and stuff. And I remember the first time I took a sports car on the track that had a super smart automatic transmission. And was like, you could shift this with the paddles or you can just put it in sport, or whatever it was, and really crank it. And the thing was so much better at driving the car than me. I was offended and embarrassed. And that's kind of the zen thing you were talking about, probably, almost like trust the force.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things this guy Jim Hyde said was "Your momentum is carrying you forward." So if you hit a rock, the thing that's going to bring you down is if you let that sort of throw off your equilibrium. But if you keep your eyes forward and you keep your body loose, it's just going to kind of glance off and your inertia will carry you forward.
Nick Caruso:
And that is a metaphor, isn't it? Let's knock off a few of the last questions real quickly. You've touched on this, but how comfortable was it for long days on the road? You clearly didn't spend days on it, but you spent a significant number of miles.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. Yeah, I did. I definitely was impressed with the general performance in that regard. I do think like in the seated position, I actually felt like my knees did bend more than on some other bikes because it also has mid foot or mid controls which would be essentially right under your body as opposed to a cruiser where they're out in front and you can kind of stretch your legs more.
Nick Caruso:
Controls meaning what, like shifting?
Steve Mazzucchi:
The shifting and the rear brake, yeah, are just beneath your feet.
Nick Caruso:
Okay.
Steve Mazzucchi:
So, again, I mean, we did 150 miles. I wasn't sweating that though, I felt totally fine with that. It's not as comfortable as a cruiser but definitely more comfortable than a lot of bikes for long distance. And I would say more comfortable than my Bonneville for long distance.
Nick Caruso:
Put this into context for me. What's the longest ride you've done on a motorcycle, the longest trip in a day, say?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Well, I've been to DC a few times to visit my family and that's maybe 250 miles. On a Bonneville that's like, that's enough.
Nick Caruso:
Then would you be willing to just on this, The Pan America and do that trip?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Definitely. Yeah, yeah.
Nick Caruso:
You can go off-roading in the Mall in Washington, DC when you get there.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Exactly. It's a blast.
Nick Caruso:
That's one here. Another asks, does it have standard tech features like navigation, radio, USB chargers, cruise control, and all the rest?
Steve Mazzucchi:
The Special, which is the sort of higher end, does have most of those features. Does not have a radio, but you can basically pair it with your phone. And if you either have a helmet with speakers, or you even just have earbuds of some kind, you can set it up and you can use. It's the equivalent of CarPlay, I think it's called, right? I don't drive many cars. But yeah, you can basically turn your little touchscreen into your infotainment system. So it definitely has navigation. Definitely has USB chargers. It has cruise control. I believe, the Special even has heated hand grips. Yeah, which can be nice. Yeah. So it's pretty well outfitted, but it doesn't have what you'll find on some of the espresso machine cruisers, which is the giant speaker system.
Nick Caruso:
The display is really cool. This is something that we covered a couple years ago, two, three years ago. It's a TFT display, is that right?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
So it's a super crisp, bright, beautiful display that we're beginning to see in cars like Audi's and other Volkswagen products and similar. So it's small but it's really beautiful from the pictures.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. I want to say it's like 6.8 inches, it is adjustable, you can actually change the angle of it. And it can be used with gloves.
Nick Caruso:
Oh, that's nice.
Steve Mazzucchi:
So it's pretty handy and it's also customizable. So you can display whatever you want on there, from what music is playing, to your trip, to different diagnostics on the motorcycle, whatever kind of information you want you can program, too.
Nick Caruso:
We can probably get this out of the way quickly. One follower asked, can you add non electric shocks, because obviously, the adjustable suspension and the drive modes and such are electronically controlled?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Right. You can do anything to a bike aftermarket, right. So you could do this. But it seems like it would defeat the purpose, because there's so many cool things built into these electric shocks that, if you want just the all natural shock feeling, this probably isn't the bike for you, I would say. But appreciate the question.
Nick Caruso:
Fair.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. So something no one asked about that I want to touch on really quickly. Your overall impressions of the looks of the bike. Because we've talked about chrome and black being standard Harley stuff. Would you think this is a different look?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, it looks way different. It's already a bit controversial because it definitely does. From the front and the back, doesn't really look like a Harley per se. It doesn't really look like other adventure bikes either because one thing they said, they stressed multiple times in their presentation was, one of the big design rules was no beaks. And the beaks are that little piece that extends over the front wheel. It doesn't have that. If you see a GS you'll be like, "Oh, yeah, that's the beak." That curved thing.
Nick Caruso:
A fender
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, but it's above the fender. It actually comes out under sort of the main-
Nick Caruso:
Oh, I see.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about?
Nick Caruso:
I'm looking at, I just googled it. It really is like a beak. That's really interesting. What is purpose of that stuff?
Steve Mazzucchi:
I actually don't know. I don't know if it may be it still keeps dust out of the engine or something. I have no idea to be honest. But they were like, "We're not going to have one of those." And so, they ditched that. And that definitely distinguishes the bike's looks. I think it looks cool. And it also does have the V-Twin engine which is such a iconic Harley thing. [crosstalk 00:34:32] That when you look at it from the side you're like, that's a Harley. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Right. It's pretty sleek looking I think overall.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
No beak, you probably can't impale pedestrians. But if they're walking in the desert, maybe they're asking for it. I don't know. Last couple things. First of all, pain points or any critiques you've got.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. So I mean, this is super minor, but it was, I guess knowing about the adaptive ride height and stuff, I probably overly high or overly low expectations for how high the seat would be. So that was still an adjustment for me. But I do feel like, and I told the Harley people this because I did struggle a little bit with it. But I was like, "If you give me another couple days on this bike, and I get comfortable with the weight, and comfortable just hanging out on one foot, I would not be struggling at all." And the other thing though is that, and they said this, this Jim Hyde fellow said at the beginning. He's like "There's a good chance you will drop this bike." And one of the first things we did in the training was they showed us how to pick it up when you drop it. I did drop it. Some people did not drop it, but I definitely dropped it multiple times.
Steve Mazzucchi:
And the handlebars have, on the special edition, have these plastic hand guards that go out at the front of the handlebar and around the hand to kind of protect your hands. And they're smartly designed in that the ends of them snap off the handlebars instead of breaking. And then you can just like snap them back on. But like I said, I dropped the bike a few times and by the end of the day, the tips of both the brake lever and the clutch lever were broken off. I wish I had it here, not that anyone can see, but I took one of them as a souvenir. It's this inch and a half piece that broke off. So Harley's great. I will say the next morning I came out to my bike and I had brand new levers. And I did not break the new round of them that I got. But all that is to say, that if you drop this bike a few times you may lose the end of your levers. If you're really good and you never dropped the bike, you don't have to worry about that. But I did. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. So that's pretty a small list.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
This is a great question to end on. Another follower asked, what's one thing that surprised you while ridding, whether it's a pro or a con?
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah. Definitely mostly positive surprises. And I would say that the most fun and exciting thing for me was how light and maneuverable it felt once I did get moving. The things that I was able to do in the training day I was pretty stoked about. And while I was definitely one of the greener people there, by the end of the day, when all the really good riders went to this motocross course I was like, "Well, give that a shot." And I'm like, "The worst thing that happened is I'm going to drop the bike, but I've already done that." And it was this loop that had whoops, those rapid bumps, and it had some climbs, and some descents, and some bank turns.
Steve Mazzucchi:
And I whipped a couple laps on that thing, like not fast. But I definitely felt really good and comfortable, and it was just exciting to have this new toy and kind of see what it can do. And to feel. You have this experience every once in a while where you're like, this is really fun, and I can see how insanely fun this would be once you get good at it. You know what I mean? And that's how I felt when I first learned to ride a motorcycle. And it brought back that joy of like, "Whoa, this is fricking awesome."
Nick Caruso:
That's great.
Steve Mazzucchi:
So yeah, that was pretty sweet. I'm excited for the brand, definitely. Because it's, I think it's a great step for them. There was Cylinderella, she said to one of the engine designers and he was just really touched by it. She just said, "I can tell you put a lot of thought into this thing." And they did. They really did. So that's a success. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
That's great. I'm glad you had a good experience. And it sounds like this is kind of a home run. We're going to wrap up, but thanks for your insights. And thanks for taking the time to run us through this, Steve.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Yeah, thanks for having me. This was fun.
Nick Caruso:
Everybody listening, thanks for tuning into The Gear Patrol Podcast. If you want any more information on the Pan America you can check out Steve's review. You can check out that link in the show notes, along with a couple other links to some things we've covered and other... So don't miss an episode. If you're listening, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. And whatever platform you use, in particular Apple podcast, we'd really appreciate a five star review. Not just to massage our own egos, but also because it jogs the algorithm and keeps us in people's feeds. New people can come, off road motorcycle noobs can come and find The Gear Patrol Podcast. Any questions, any comments you can email me at podcast@gearpatrol.com. Steve Mazzucchi, thank you for joining me.
Steve Mazzucchi:
Thank you, Nick.
Nick Caruso:
I'm Nick Caruso. I'm glad you're all here. And until next time, take care.