I’m not a Harley guy. Their motor technology is 80 years old, their bikes shake bad enough that anything not safety wired or threadlocked down will eventually fall off and most of their engineering leaves me scratching my head. For some reason, I’ve got it bad for the XR1200, and the guys from Storz Performance aren’t helping any with their new showbike.

I want it, in a purely sexual kind of way. I’ll break it in at Deal’s Gap, running the Dragon WFO and tearing the knee armor from my trusty Aerostitch suit. I’ll ride it until my eyeballs bleed and all the fillings in my teeth rattle out. Crude, unrefined and painfully uncomfortable after an hour in the saddle? I don’t care, because it just looks so damn good. I’ve got plenty of threadlock and safety wire in the garage.

Want your XR1200 to look like this? Contact Storz Performance.

Harley Davidson XR1200: Lustworthy

Reeling from the collapse of the motorcycle and powersports market in the U.S., Harley Davidson has announced the extension of its current trade in promotion through the end of February. Under the terms of the program, owners of competitor’s motorcycles can receive an additional $500 trade in credit from Harley Davidson, above and beyond any trade in price negotiated with the dealership. The credit must be applied to the purchase of a new Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Forced to shut down operations of Buell Motorcycles and unable to sell MV Augusta, Harley Davidson witnessed a forty percent drop in revenue from 2008 to 2009. Excess production capacity forced Harley Davidson to shutter one assembly plant in York, PA and announce layoffs of up to 1,000 workers in December 2009.

During this year’s pair of Biker rallies, held annually in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, officials were capable of fining anyone caught (only) wearing a thong in public $225 dollars.

Personally, I am incensed by this gratuitous legislative violation of every American’s right to “Life, Liberty, and the Asymptotic Pursuit of Nudity Without Ever Actually Achieving It and Thereby Being Arrested.”

However, I could probably understand such a law, having myself made plenty of comments in regard to the skinny-challenged among us who insist on stuffing themselves into crazy things like bikinis and sometimes even jeans.

Most disturbing, though, is that Myrtle Beach officials are a bunch of racist bastards legally mandating racist behavior, and we’re letting them get away with it!

Harley-Davidson is creating a photo mosaic for their 2010 Catalog, and in order to do it, they need at least 10,000 photos of actual Harley owners with their bikes by Friday, May 15th. So if you have a hog, here’s your chance to get yourself into a little bit of Harley history.

We’d like to see them too, especially if you have an XR1200 (we’re partial to the Eurostyle bikes around here). So post your pictures in the comments and send them to Harley-Davidson.

Okay, it’s confession time. I’ve got a man-crush on the new Harley-Davidson F150.  It’s been three days since we posted about it, and I keep coming back to admire it again.

Billionaire financier and Berkshire Hathaway Chief Executive Warren Buffett poses on a motorcycle during the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Oracle of Omaha is at it again. This week, billionaire investor Warren Buffet announced his firm, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., would be purchasing $300 million in debt from apparently ailing motorcycle manufacturer, Harley-Davidson Inc. As per the terms of the agreement, Buffet’s $300 million investment will be matched dollar-for-dollar by Harley’s current largest shareholder, Davis Selected Advisors LP, and Berkshire will earn 15% interest on the senior unsecured notes.

Reporting a total market value loss of 2/3 over the past year, immediately following the announcement of Harley’s receipt of the golden Buffet ticket, HD stock jumped a full 16% on the NYSE, closing out the day with its biggest stock gain in months.

Now we’ll admit, we here at RideLust usually favor crotch rockets above any other type of motorcycle, but we’re objective enough to give credit where credit’s due. Even though it probably won’t leave Messrs. Harley and Davidson quaking in their steel-toed boots, the Honda Fury does offer some sizable competition in the touring bike arena. Definitely geared towards the “Orange County Chopper” crowd, the Honda Fury features the longest wheelbase ever found on any production Honda motorcycle, as well as what Honda calls a “furious” exhaust note.

Full gallery and press release after the jump

Last Thursday night, Harley-Davidson had a premiere party for the winners of its “Bikes, Camera, Action!” film contest. The company wanted to encourage female filmmakers to “capture the passion, spirit, independence, and empowerment that embodies the spirit of female riders”. Which roughly translates to “we want to empower females to buy our motorcycles”. That’s not a bad thing though, the market for motorcycles is traditionally a male dominated one, and that 10-15% of female riders is generally ignored by manufacturers. HD is showing their female customers some love, and hopefully inspiring some new ones.

The winner of the contest was Victoria Rose Sampson with her short film Her Need for Speed. Sampson received $5,000, a High Def video camera, and a custom Harley-Davidson leather jacket for the win. Read on to see the winning video, plus the two runner-up videos:

Just as the American auto industry is wheezing out it’s death rattle, the American motorcycle industry is taking steps toward positive change. Maybe they saw how GM’s failure to adapt with the times caused their downfall, who knows, whatever the reason, they’ve finally decided to sell the XR1200 sportster here in the US.

The bike has been available in Europe for a while now and the rumor is that 750 XR1200s will be set aside for sale in the US. Of course, there’s no formal word from HD headquarters yet concerning the US launch, but a quick call around to some friends at a local NJ Harley dealership confirmed that they will have some XR1200’s in stock by February of 2009. Price should be $11,179, but other than that, all we have are rumors. Check them out:

I have tremendous respect for fabricators, guys who not only build their own cars or bikes, but actually make the parts themselves. The kind of guys that actually bend the tubes for the frames and machine the components out of a solid block of metal to make the parts they need for their custom bikes.

Japanese motorcycle builder Chicara Nagata builds his bikes that way. Everything on his bikes is hand-built except for the antique drivetrains he uses. Even the controls and the throttle are hand crafted. There are almost 500 parts on each bike, fabricating each part and assembling it can take Nagata up to 7,500 hours per bike. In 2006, he won the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building, and three of his bikes are currently featured in an exhibit at New York’s Ippodo Gallery. If you’re interested in getting one, they’re $1 million apiece. Here they are: