2018 Road Glide Special Harley-Davidson Test Ride and Detailed Review

Right off the bat, you can pencil me in as “not a fan” of the shark-nose fairing, but I know some of you are wild about the thing, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.

Right off the bat, I have a confession to make; you can pencil me in as “not a fan” of the shark-nose fairing. Seriously, where’s the SCUBA tank and Garand when you need them? It’s not even the fact that it’s a frame-mount fairing — I loved my old FXRP’s bullet fairing — but this thing is just too wide. In my humble opinion of course, I know some of you are wild about the thing, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all, so let’s move on.

Dual “Daymaker” LED headlamps light the way from their recess in the leading edge of the fairing with a low-profile, vented-and-smoked windshield up top and standoff bullet turn signals to finish off the forward lighting. While the front fender carries a full-length shape that is reminiscent of the classic old FL fender, the sides a cut high and tight for ample view of the front cast aluminum “Enforcer” wheel (base model) or “Talon” wheel (Special) and it passes on any sort of adornment for an ultra-clean presentation.

2018 Harley-Davidson Road Glide Special Review and Specs

If you go all the way with "Reflex" brakes and ABS, you'll have twofold protection for your contact patch and greater peace-of-mind for those high-pucker hauldowns when you need every ounce of stopping power you can get.

Detailed information on the new 2018 Harley-Davidson Road Glide Special. Matt Laidlaw goes into details with Andrew Asevo on this popular H-D Touring model. They take a ride into Whittier up Turnbull Canyon Road. Get the advice you need to to know if this is the right motorcycle for you.