There is a revolution going on in the motorcycle world, and it’s the rise of the affordable bike. There are lots of people who want to ride motorcycles, but don’t want to detonate their savings to afford a new one. Several brands have found success in launching smaller, more affordable motorcycles. Now, it’s time for Harley-Davidson to get in on the fun. Next year, Harley-Davidson says it will launch the Sprint, a $6,000 Harley that you might actually be able to afford.
This news comes to us from Motorcycle.com, which cites Harley-Davidson’s July 30 earnings call. In that call, Harley-Davidson Chief Executive Officer Jochen Zeitz dropped a bombshell. It had been developing two new affordable motorcycles in secret. Now, Zeitz says, these bikes are almost ready for primetime. One of them is the Harley-Davidson Sprint, a bike that’s supposed to cost just $6,000. The motorcycle sounds like a nod to the past, but also signals that Harley-Davidson is paying attention to the motorcycle market.
Harley-Davidson has thus far missed out entirely on the biggest trends in the motorcycle industry. If you look at charts of motorcycle sales, it appears that the whole industry is struggling to convince people to buy new motorcycles. In 2006, 1.2 million new motorcycles went home to customers in America. Sales crashed during the Great Recession and still haven’t fully recovered. Nowadays, a good year of sales for the industry looks closer to 500,000 units. It isn’t that people aren’t riding motorcycles anymore, as motorcycle registrations remain high. It’s that it’s hard to sell a rider on a new bike when a used one often has low miles for a fraction of the price of new. So, manufacturers are trying to find out how to get more people on new motorcycles.
The Small Bore Revolution
One winning strategy has been the low-displacement, low-cost motorcycle. These motorcycles aren’t big on power, but they’re huge on character and fun while having prices that young riders can actually afford. Honda has seen massive success in its lineup of MiniMotos, and Royal Enfield deals in pretty much nothing but affordable motorcycles. Even Triumph has seen the writing on the wall and launched a line of affordable small-displacement motorcycles.
Many brands continue to sell big and expensive bikes, too, but with the small bikes they can cover nearly all ends of the market. This has worked smashingly well. In 2024, Triumph had its best sales year in its 122-year history after moving 134,635 units worldwide, and Triumph’s success was fueled by its new small motorcycles.
Meanwhile, Royal Enfield has been a barn burner that’s broken its sales records over and over for the past couple of years. It’s doing this on the backs of so many new affordable models that keep getting rave reviews.
Yet, missing from all of this action has been Harley-Davidson. Back in 2023, I reported how Harley-Davidson began importing its seriously affordable X350 from its Chinese operations. However, bafflingly, Harley stomped all hopes of the bike being available to the public. Instead, the X350 has been relegated to a life in the company’s motorcycle training classes.
Harley has been trying to attract riders with lighter wallets, but not particularly well. The Motor Company’s LiveWire spinoff brand launched the $15,999 S2 Alpinista, which is the cheapest electric motorcycle you can buy with Harley DNA, but that’s still quite expensive. Then, back in early spring, Harley dropped the price of the Nightster to $9,999. That was a move in the correct direction! But while $9,999 is cheap for a Harley, it’s not really cheap for a motorcycle.
Harley’s Secret Cheap Moto
As it turns out, Harley has had an Ace up its sleeve this entire time. According to Harley-Davidson’s Q2 2025 presentation, Harley-Davidson has been secretly working on a new affordable motorcycle since 2021. This motorcycle, named the Sprint, has been in development alongside an entry-level cruiser.
Reportedly, Harley didn’t even plan on showing its dealers the new Sprint until this October, and the world wasn’t going to see it until 2026. It’s not clear why Harley seemingly dropped the bomb early, but Motorcycle.com speculates it’s because investors might have been feeling uneasy about the brand not taking the affordable part of the market seriously. The press and enthusiasts have felt similar.
However, it does appear that Harley is finally joining the affordable motorcycle party, and I suppose it’s better to be late than to never enter the market at all. Here’s what Zeitz said, via Motorcycle.com:
“Inspired by our heritage and the spirit of the iconic Harley Davidson Sprint motorcycle, this new bike embodies boldness, irreverence and fun, capturing the rebellious energy that defines the Harley-Davidson experience,” says Zeitz. “Scheduled for release in 2026 and for presentation to our global dealer network in October, I’m pleased to share that we’re targeting an entry price below $6,000 We believe this motorcycle will not only be highly accessible, but also profitable, marking a significant step forward in driving Harley-Davidson’s future profitable growth and opening up a new path in motorcycle segment for the company in future years for its key markets.”
Harley says that this motorcycle will right the wrongs of the past. Harley has dabbled in affordable motorcycles throughout its history, with the most recent attempts being infamous failures. More than two decades ago, Harley-Davidson wanted the Buell Blast (above) to be the entry point into the Harley ecosystem, but that bike ended up being so over-budget that it was one of the projects that accelerated the demise of the relationship between Buell Motorcycle and Harley-Davidson.
Then, in 2014, Harley tried to go its own path with the Street 500, Street 750, and their derivatives.
The Street series even had an attractive entry price of only $6,700, or $1,200 cheaper than what was the cheapest Harley-Davidson Sportster of the era. Unfortunately, Harley admits that the Street series never found a large enough audience to make it profitable, and the Bar and Shield killed the Street series off in 2022.
Riders and journalists, myself included, have wondered why Harley has completely left the affordable motorcycle market. Seemingly, everyone else was cashing in on the trend, while Harley stayed the course, selling expensive bikes. It was even more frustrating to see that Harley had an affordable motorcycle in its international markets, but it refused to sell it in America. This announcement ties it all together. Development on a new cheap bike began before the Street was killed off, and Harley’s refusal to sell the X350 in America might have been because it was developing the Sprint in secret.
What’s In A Name
Alright, so Harley has a cheap bike coming. What’s with that name? Harley’s announcement says it’s “inspired by our heritage,” but what does that mean? Back in the 1950s, Harley-Davidson found itself battling the increasing popularity of imported motorcycles in America. To help shore up its position against the flood of imports, Harley-Davidson purchased 50 percent of Italy’s Aermacchi in 1960. Aermacchi-Harley-Davidson was born and soon enough, Harley began importing Italian Aermacchi motorcycles into America with Harley-Davidson badging on them.
In 1961, Harley imported the Aermacchi 250, renaming it the 250 Sprint. This bike, which was really only a Harley in name only, sported a 246cc single making 18 HP. In 1969, Aermacchi bumped the engine up to 344cc, giving birth to the SS 350 Sprint, which made around 25 HP.
The Aermacchi Harley period is sometimes considered to be part of a dark era for Harley, especially in the context of what happened to Harley-Davidson in the late 1960s: The AMF years. My retrospective elaborates:
It’s 1965 and as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes, Harley-Davidson is finding itself struggling to swim up a stream of imports flooding in from Japan. The company is in need of cash, so it goes public. In 1968, Bangor Punta Corp., a conglomerate with its hands in boats and firearms, made a bid to purchase Harley for $32 a share, valuing the motorcycle manufacturer at $22.8 million. Harley-Davidson president William H. Davidson hit back, telling Bangor Punta that the company wasn’t for sale. But that wasn’t necessarily true.
Harley-Davidson instead ended up in bed with American Machine and Foundry. Many Americans are familiar with AMF for its bowling equipment, but AMF also built bomb casings, tennis rackets, and propane cylinders. AMF’s purchase of Harley, while cheaper at $21.6 million, was supposed to shore the American motorcycle maker up for the future. Harley says it made the 1969 deal with AMF because it desperately needed the resources to update its organization.
AMF then took Harley-Davidson in a bunch of strange directions. The company slapped AMF on Harley-Davidson tanks while upping production. However, this seemed to be more like quantity over quality as owners and magazines felt Harley was producing low-quality, unreliable machines. Motorcycle.com goes as far as to claim that AMF-era Harleys were so unreliable that dealerships rebuilt engines under warranty and classified listings made sure to point out when a used bike was “pre-AMF.” AMF also got plenty weird with Harley, slapping the Bar and Shield onto vehicles like golf carts and even snowmobiles.
The Sprint was discontinued in 1974, and Harley’s Aermacchi experiment ended in 1978 when the brand was sold to the Castiglioni brothers of Cagiva fame.
The Aermacchi Harleys used to be deeply unpopular, leading to the Aermacchis tending to be some of the cheapest Harley-branded bikes that you can find for sale in your local classifieds. However, these old bikes seem to be gaining a bit of a fandom nowadays. Maybe that’s why Harley isn’t afraid to use the name again for the new bike.
Sadly, this is all that we know for now. Harley has not released images, projected specifications, or any details like that. But I do like the idea that Harley is going to have a bike that costs around $6,000 that will still be fun to ride. I cannot wait to see what it looks like. Riders have been begging for an affordable Harley for a while now. Let’s see if the Motor Company can deliver.
Top graphic image: Bring a Trailer
You totally missed the mark while lamenting the “curse” of AMF. Harley was in financial trouble long before AMF came to the rescue, as was quality control. After the take over quality (initially) declined further as legacy employees routinely sought to sabotage AMFs attempts at resolving manufacturing inefficiencies. However many of these quality and manufacturing issues were resolved over the next decade as AMF automated many processes and effectively turned Harley around. HD as a brand owns its very existence to the AMF bailout.
I have had 8 or 9 bikes over the last 15 years, usually Kawasaki and Suzuki although I am interested in something from most manufacturers. I have ridden Harleys and they have a fun novelty, although I don’t really like baggers and find most of their bikes overpriced even in the used market.
I am really curious if Harley can reinvent themselves/expand their market share. On one hand the Pan-America is a a remarkably forward thinking bike that demonstrates their ability to innovate IMO. On the other hand, their customer base isn’t interested, the large displacement ADV bike already has a king and a lot of other competition, all at a time when I think more people are interested in mid-weight ADVs. There are a lot of factors working against them, but happy to hear that someone is trying a small bike.
To anyone complaining about the sales people, be blunt, be sarcastic, hell you can even be rude. I am at the dealership to get what I want, their job is to earn a commission.
With state taxes and fees and registration, my Honda ADV160 was essentially $6,000 so this Harley will likely be $7K.
That said, a belt drive mid-displacement bike, like BMWs 800 at that price point would be pretty attractive.
What the hell could HD offer for $6K that a buyer could not get a better version of from Honda Suzuki, Kawasaki or Yamaha?
My first thought too. And not that one should really care, but buying something of that type from Honda, etc., eliminates what I’d imagine would be a good deal of grief from “real” Harley owners and enthusiasts.
I suspect the Harley will have takers even if it’s inferior because it’s American and it’s a Harley.
To many, being a Harley owner is part of their identity.
I actually hope you are right because that would show that they are not hinging their masculinity only on the big bikes. I have had harely people say any small harley is a chick bike. sad.
I’m definitely intrigued. Will I buy one? Probably not.