Latest in Touring and CVO

About Touring and CVO

If the Softail is Harley's showpiece, the Touring family is its moneymaker and its comfort zone. These are the big baggers built to cross states in a day: the Electra Glide lineage that began in the mid-1960s, the Road King with its windshield and classic headlight, the Street Glide with its fork-mounted batwing fairing and the Road Glide with its frame-mounted sharknose fairing that splits the wind and splits opinion.

Above them sits CVO, short for Custom Vehicle Operations, the in-house custom shop that since the late 1990s has turned out limited-production models with the biggest engines, the boldest paint and the most expensive price tags in the range. A major redesign arrived for the Street Glide and Road Glide recently, with new bodywork, a large touchscreen and updated Milwaukee-Eight engines, while racing in the King of the Baggers series has given these heavyweight touring bikes surprising performance credibility.

The touring segment is Harley's core profit center and the place where its rivalry with Indian's Challenger, Chieftain and Roadmaster is most intense. Honda's Gold Wing and BMW's K 1600 offer different takes on the long-distance theme. Prices, technology and weight are the perennial complaints, and loyalty is the perennial answer. This page collects Touring and CVO launches, reviews, comparisons, recalls, racing news and the custom scene that grows up around these bikes.