I been riding bikes since I was 13. That's about 55 years now. Have had most of them - Triumph 750 Bonnie (last of the right side shifters), BSA, bunch a Honda's (still have a few), Hodaka, Husky, BMW, Ossa, Suzuki, Yamaha, Royal Enfield ... You get the idea...
Now I have a Harley and some other stuff as projects. I met my wife riding motorcycles - she on hers, me on mine; at a left turn as it was starting to rain. The wife and I fit on the Harley, it goes along nicely. It handles real roads just fine (asphalt, gravel, mixed). Gets good gas mileage, and it's not loud.
I bought it used and immediately took the Cycle Shack slash cut exhaust amplifiers off and put stock mufflers back on (new owners give them away
). It's about as hard to work on as a John Deere. If I want to go somewhere long distance, I rent a Road King. Wife and I have done up to 11 hrs in the saddle on a Road King. I can not say that about any other bike.
It's roomy and comfy. Yeah, it'll drag pipes two up with all the travel bags full - but so will a Gold Wing (been there, done that ...). Yeah, it's somewhat doggy to handle at less than 5 mph, but once it's rolling, it's as easy as can be. It only took me 40 years to figure this out ...
It's an ergonomic thing. I used to be like most folks "there are better values out there, etc." Bull puckey, if it fits and runs and is more comfortable than other bikes, I get why folks pay BIG $$ for a Harley. It's not like anything else. If you've ridden one for more than 4 hours and you still don't like it, fine... But there are a LOT of 200,000 and even 500,000 mile Harley riders. And there are a small but significant number of 1,000,000 mile Harley riders out there.
They sell in Europe and even in Japan. So do John Deere tractors and Caterpillar and other US big ticket items. To the folks that know, they are worth the money. See the example above about buying at end of lease... By the time they are done with the lease, they have figured it out and want to keep their baby.
Yeah, there are a lot of bad boy chopped, clipped, trimmed, lowered, raked Harley's out there. Whole different thing. Sort of the poor mans Vincent with mods.
There are a bunch of Japanese "cruisers" out there. Some are decent, some are laughable. But they almost all end up in the scrap yard.
Even old Harley's roll on