The debut of the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 was the headline event from 2021 – with the Bar & Shield brand offering its first motorcycle that truly deviated from the company’s cruiser lineup.
An integral part of Harley-Davidson’s “Hardwire” plan to restructure the company for the future, the Pan America 1250 is a conquest bike for the American bike-maker, with an eye on scooping up some sales from rival European brands.
Was it a success? That depends on whom you ask. American publications certainly seemed to think so, with the Pan America 1250 taking top honors in several of their shootouts last year. Meanwhile, the European press was less-enthused.
We will let you decide if home-team bias, on both sides of the pond, are at play there. For our money, we’d put the Ducati Multistrada V4 S in our garage before the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250, but reasonable minds can easily disagree on this thought.
Shootouts don’t balance the account’s books however, and for the bean-counters, the true measure of a motorcycle’s success is on the showroom floor.
To that end, Harley-Davidson sold just over 2,500 units of its Pan America lineup in the USA last year, according to our Bothan spies.
