Harley-Davidson Is Teasing America With The Last Kind Of Motorcycle You’d Expect It To Make Today

For decades, Harley-Davidson has fostered a reputation for being one of the first stops for the rider who wants to ride a La-Z-Boy down the highway. Aside from curiosities like the Pan America and the spun-off LiveWire brand, you have to look elsewhere if you want a Harley that isn’t a cruiser. But the Motor Company recently teased a future where, maybe, it could try something different again. This is the Harley-Davidson RMCR concept, and it’s a stunning café racer from the last brand you’d expect to do such a thing. Now, Harley just needs to put it into production.

Back in 2021, Harley-Davidson launched a production engine with incredible potential. The all-new clean sheet 1250 Revolution Max, or “Revmax” V-twin engine, was a technological leap forward for the Motor Company. This engine has a peak RPM of 9,500, dual counterbalancers, variable valve timing, scissors gear primary drive, independent hydraulic adjustment for the roller-finger valves, and an impressive amount of weight reduction.

There’s more, as the Revmax sports single-piece aluminum cylinders with nickel silicon carbide-surface galvanic coatings, forged pistons, plus rocker covers, camshaft covers, and a primary cover made of magnesium. I’m still not done with this engine yet, as the Revmax’s crankshaft connecting rod journals are offset by 30 degrees, and it has a 90-degree firing order.

At 150 horsepower and 94 lb-ft of torque, Harley’s Revmax even made more power than the Indian, BMW, and Triumph engines that Harley was angling to beat. The company then pointed out that it did all this in-house without help from Porsche — as it did with the V-Rod’s engine — or anyone else.

Unfortunately, Harley did all of this work, but hasn’t really let the engine live up to its full potential. As of present, the Revmax lives in the excellent Pan America 1250 adventure-touring bike and the beefy Sportster S muscle bike, while a smaller version inhabits the Nightster cruiser. All of these bikes are well-reviewed and largely beloved by their owners, but it seems that Harley-Davidson hasn’t yet found the apex of this engine. Well, that was until now.

Sporty Harleys

Harley-Davidson has frequently flirted with the idea of having sporty motorcycles behind its shield. Any fan of American two-wheelers might be able to recall Buell’s old relationship with Harley-Davidson. Then there was the time when Harley acquired MV Agusta in 2008, just to blow it up in 2009 during the global recession.

Even those times aside, Harley-Davidson built the XR1200 street tracker-inspired Sportster from 2008 to 2013. In the past, there was also the VR1000 superbike of the 1990s and the Harley-Davidson XLCR 1000 café racer of the late 1970s.

Many of these efforts eventually failed or were discontinued, but Harley has never really forgotten about them. Back in 2018, Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich championed the “More Roads to Harley-Davidson” that, among other things, sought to breathe fresh life into Harley by entering motorcycle markets it traditionally didn’t operate in. More Roads was ambitious and called for a future where Harley’s bread and butter big cruisers would be joined by a vivid lineup of café racers, sportbikes, streetfighters, adventure bikes, mopeds, electric motorcycles, and standards.

We caught a glimpse into that future with concepts like the Bronx, the VR1000 Café Racer, the Custom 1250, the Pan America, the electric scrambler, the light electric dirt bike, and more.

Unfortunately, when Jochen Zeitz replaced Levatich in 2020, he scrapped pretty much the entire initiative, keeping only the projects that were near completion. That’s why we have the Pan America, LiveWire, and the Sportster S. Zeitz was so serious about canning More Roads that, as I personally witnessed, Harley-Davidson even deleted social media posts associated with the initiative.

Harley Teases America With A Café Racer

Zeitz’s plan was to play the hits and keep slinging big cruisers while pushing t-shirts and other merch. He also wanted to build fewer bikes at high prices to make them feel more exclusive. As Cycle World notes, this worked for a couple of years as income stayed high while tens of thousands of units sat unsold. Zeitz’s strategy eventually backfired as both income and sales spiraled. In 2025, Zeitz left his post and was replaced by Artie Starrs. Now, Starrs is an interesting character because his previous roles weren’t with motorcycle companies, but with Topgolf, Pizza Hut, and Rave Cinemas.

It also seems like Starrs doesn’t believe in turning Harley-Davidson into the Ferrari of motorcycles. So, his version of Harley-Davidson has changed course on a few things. As ADV Rider claims, Zeitz allegedly rarely communicated with dealers, rarely attended dealer meetings, and supposedly issued orders without much consultation. So Starrs changed that right away by asking dealers what did and didn’t work in the Zeitz era.

Then he tackled pricing. 17 Harley models entered 2026 with the same names they had in 2025. Of those 17, six models had their prices reduced through the reconfiguration of options. I’m not talking by hundreds of dollars, either, but by thousands of dollars. Only two models saw price increases this year. The rest of the nine returning models stayed the course on price. Allegedly, Starrs is even trying to convince people to buy the Pan America, something that Harley did a poor job with during the Zeitz era.

Now, we’re seeing what could be a promising future. In February at the Mama Tried Motorcycle Show, Harley-Davidson teased the RMCR (Revolution Max Café Racer). In March, images of the RMCR finally made it to the press, and it’s a stunner.

This bike, which reportedly rides on the Pan America 1250’s platform and sports the 1252cc Revolution Max V-twin, takes much of its inspiration from the XLCR. As the story goes, famed designer and third-generation Davidson family member Willie G. Davidson had a knack for the café racers that frequented the London biker hangout, the Ace Café. In several decades past, Brits stripped down their BSAs, Nortons, Triumphs, and others down to the bare minimum, attached low bars, and raced from café to café. In the 1970s, people started giving Japanese bikes the café racer treatment, too.

In the mid-1970s, Davidson started tinkering on his own Harley café racer, which later became a whole company team effort. When the XLCR hit the market in 1977, it wasn’t just the coolest Harley built until that point, but it was just as fast as it looked.

Sadly, Harley’s typical clientele didn’t bite on the $3,600 XLCR, and neither did the guys chopping up Japanese bikes. Harley moved barely over 3,000 units over only three model years. The XLCR might have been a flop when it came to sales, but today, it’s highly collectible and often used as an example that Harley really can build more than just cruisers. Cycle World said, “As a motorcycle, the XLCR has not much merit. As an adventure, the XLCR has no equal.”

That brings us to the RMCR. This motorcycle, which Harley-Davidson says is inspired by the XLCR, pretty much replaces the Bronx concept that was canned with More Roads. But it also seems to take some inspiration from the More Roads concepts that Harley decided not to produce. The RMCR’s fairing looks like the one from the VR1000 Café Racer concept, and the swingarm looks awfully similar to the one on the Bronx.

This new concept is drenched in carbon fiber, sings from Akrapovic pipes, sports 17-inch wheels, rides on Öhlins forks, and has its dinner plates of brakes chomped on by Brembo calipers. I suspect it probably weighs a good deal less than the 542-pound Pan America that it’s based on.

This is easily one of the best-looking bikes to come out of the Motor Company in years. I won’t go as far as to say it’s as hot as an Indian FTR1200, but it sure feels like I’m sweating right now just looking at this thing.

Unfortunately, Harley-Davidson is being weirdly quiet about the RMCR. It was rolled out without any announcements, press releases, or anything like that. Motor Cycle News says that Harley has confirmed to it that it currently has no plans to put the RMCR into production.

Harley Should Build It, Anyway

Of course, that could change depending on how people respond. Then again, now would be a tricky time for Harley to try jumping into another market, given trade tensions, global conflicts, and the current uncertainty around oil prices.

But it would be sad that Harley would put in so much work to make an awesome motorcycle just to do nothing with it. We don’t need a repeat of the More Roads bloodbath! If anything, I do think that this bike is a sign that Starrs does want to have fun with the Bar and Shield, and that makes me excited.

I sure hope that, one day, when things get a bit easier, Harley-Davidson takes a chance and puts the RMCR into production. This is easily the coolest-looking machine to roll out of Milwaukee in years. I have no idea if it would have a chance of selling, but I bet I’d ride it with a smile wide enough to span Lake Michigan.

Top graphic image: Harley-Davidson