Against the wind!

With the present “Clubstyle” wave, another part of the Harley-Davidson history, a frame-mounted fairing, is unearthed, up to now mostly forgotten, but with a fascinating background story! When the FXRT “Sport Glide” was introduced in 1983, this bike was a Harley model where some things didn’t quite make any sense: the air intakes in the fairing were located nowhere where they made any sense – neither the rider nor the engine were anywhere near the air stream. The police model FXRP filled the void with warning lights – and the Harley advertisement for “additional air supply” was clearly wrong. Neither the cases nor the top case had any similarity with other Harley designs and offered less space than the Tour Paks of the Electra Glides. Indeed, these parts had been designed and developed for a completely different motorcycle: the still shrouded in legend “NOVA” model series. 

The “NOVA” project was decided during the so-called “Pinehurst Meetings” in 1976, during which also the development of the Evolution engines was decided. For a long time, the “NOVA” project was a vague rumour until the magazine “Supercycle” in May 1985 published photos of test bikes and engine details. Only in August 2002, after two years of “probing” and one year after the introduction of the V-Rod, the magazine “American Rider” showed the V-4 Harley on its cover and uncovered in a 9-page feature a part of this history, which can now also be found on the internet. This story is not only exciting because it wasn’t made public for almost 25 years, it is told by somebody whose business cards were enclosed in the press folders of the Company in the 80s and who, at least to some extent, knows the truth: Buzz Buzzelli.

That the people involved didn’t like to talk about the “NOVA” project is maybe also due to the fact that so much work and ‘heart and soul’ was put into these bikes, not to mention money: Harley-Davison is supposed to have sunk 15 million dollars in ten years into this bike. A complete line of V-2, V-4 and V-6 motorcycles which, had they as planned been introduced in 1981, would have been technologically fully up-to-date then. How close the “NOVA” came to production is still only known to the people who were involved. The V-4 version was supposed to be introduced for model year 1982, and by around 1980 the project had produced 30 engines and 12 functioning prototypes, which already had done 100,000 test miles. Which refutes the often rumored legend that AMF invested nothing into the future of Harley-Davidson. Then in 1980 the AMF management changed and with it the direction: cuts to the NOVA budget ordered by AMF are supposed to have been reasons which triggered the buy-back of Harley-Davidson by its own managers, but this could never be cited as a reason.

Today in the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee there are several prototypes, among them a V-4 design study, which explains the original task of the jet-like air intakes: they were placed exactly where they should be, however, on the touring version of the NOVA V-4, from where they were supposed to stream into the fake tank by the engine, past the engine to a ventilator in the rear, which was supposed to “extract” the heat from the engine. Already in the 70s, Willie G. wanted to prevent the use of a water cooler in front of the engine at all costs. The FXRT fairing was tested extensively in the wind tunnel and is likely to have already been in a quite advanced state of development when the NOVA project was stopped. Millions of dollars (AMF money to be honest) had been wasted – and what was left was a fairing, saddlebags and several unused patents like the ones for “forced rear cooling”. In order not to write off his efforts completely, Willie G. used the already developed parts for a “Sport Touring” version of the FX, and the Sport Glide was born. Despite a rather moderate sales success, the FXRT stayed in the program from 1983 to 1992 – the police version with fairing or touring screen for a bit longer. While it was produced, the FXRT was never much in demand as a base for customizing projects – most of them were stripped of their touring equipment and fairings and cases were sold at swap meets. Arlen Ness once created an XLRT version “just for fun” and built an Ironhead with rubber bearing into the XLRT chassis long before Harley offered the Sportster motor with rubber bearing. Some fairings were even used for V-Rod conversions, without the owners knowing how close they were to the origins of the original fairing: the NOVA model series was developed with support from Porsche Engineering. Meanwhile the FXRT fairings, which curiously never had a nickname, are now so much in demand again that versions for the present Milwaukee-Eight models are being made again in GFRP and plastic. Today’s Harley riders don’t mind fairings and defy weather conditions in highest comfort, as long as it is “against the wind”!