What do you call a cruiser larger than 1000cc but smaller than the horsepower-happy two-liter behemoths? The market has struggled to pin the right label on this evolving class for years, settling (rather lazily) on the catchall designation "middleweight." If you believe the spin, this includes everything from 600cc on up to 1300cc-quite an overwhelming mix of machinery.
Google up the actual word "middleweight," on the other hand, and you'll get an expansive selection of adjectives. The Wikipedia entry lists different classes in the sport of boxing, from middleweight to super middleweight, light heavyweight, cruiserweight and heavyweight. It's a more descriptive naming convention; the cruiserweight division, for instance, was established to accommodate smaller heavyweight fighters who couldn't compete with the growing size of in-class competitors at the time-which very nearly describes the bikes we're talking about here-the 1300cc class. Or, should we say, what we now consider to be the cruiserweight class.
When Suzuki launched the Intruder 1400 back in 1987, its 1360cc mill was the largest V-Twin production engine available at the time, touching off displacement wars in the cruiser market. The current middleweight skirmish, though, took longer to heat up. Honda didn't join the fray with its VTX1300 until 2003. In hindsight, that looks like miraculous timing: According to industry sources, the mid-sized cruiser class has been hard on the gas (18-percent sales growth since 2002), thanks to buyers looking for a big-bike look and feel with the light weight and easy handling of a smaller machine. With the introduction of Star's 1300 last year, the 1300 class became a de facto subgroup, and we didn't need industry wonks to tell us consumers were interested-the heaps of letters we've received confirm it.
You could say it was mandated. We gathered up the three clear-cut "heavy middleweights" for some urban and back-road bombing, switching on and off among a core group of three test riders.
In This Corner...
Right from the jump, the testers were surprised by the bikes' differences, and not just for the usual visual reasons. Even the common denominator-a V-twin powerplant-has slight variations from bike to bike. The mills range from the S83's classic, 45-degree vee arrangement to the Star's slick, fuel-injected 60-degree setup. The Honda splits the difference with a liquid-cooled, 52-degree vee-just like its bigger 1800cc brother.
Our pilots ran the physical gamut, ranging from strapping, 6-foot-3 publisher Marty Estes, to editor Cherney at a disputable 5-foot-7, to our 5-foot-4 new kid on the block, Evan Kay. We had the ergonomic variables covered.
But that doesn't mean the 1300 engine is a sleeved-down VTX1800. The downsized example of the VTX line was fresh from the ground up when it debuted back in 2003, and differs in more than just displacement. For one, the VTX1300C is carbureted, and unlike the 1800, utilizes a single-pin crank arrangement. It also comes in "S" and "R" versions, which vary the bodywork and wheel options.
As for the ol' Intruder 1400, its years of service are legion. Introduced when styles were chopped and lean, the 1400 was engineered to be clean and lanky. With its Reagan-era lines, the 45-degree air/oil-cooled V-twin makes no bones about the fact that it's a (restrained) replica chopper, circa 1987. These days, it's wearing a Boulevard S83 badge, which spells out the cubic inches it displaces.