Motorcycle Comparison Road Test: Harley-Davidson Softail Deuce Vs. Victory Vegas

It was a perfect summer night in Los Angeles, even if it was the beginning of February.

Our mission was just supposed to be to move the new Victory Vegas and the Harley-Davidson Deuce to where they were to be photographed the next day, a 20-minute ride. But the night was balmy and traffic was light. A bit of cruising seemed in order. We were, after all, forced to ride America's two premiere cruisers, bikes that apparently aim at the same target, so we decided to make the most of it. Both the Deuce and the Victory push style to the forefront and flaunt the same sort of look. Narrow bikes with 21-inch front wheels, both strut sexy lines that suck in eyeballs and have similarities that beg comparison.

Though the Vegas has the advantage to knowing how its competitor plays the game, we weren't going to bet against the Deuce, consistently one of our favorite cruisers, one that is much more satisfying to simply ride than such a highly styled bike has any right to be.

We pushed the bikes out of the storage area, and fired them up. With fuel injection on both engines (standard on the Victory, optional on the Harley), this is just a matter of punch and play. Hit the starter buttons and both idle immediately. We pulled on our helmets and gloves, and both were ready to go. Instead of setting off toward the freeway, we headed for the Sunset Strip.

In the concrete canyon on Wilshire Boulevard, we could hear muted echoes reverberating as we powered up LA's nearly empty main street. It was enough to get our blood up, but the volume was low enough that we didn't feel the need to throttle back to be civilized as we turned north on a residential street to reach the Strip.

A few minutes later we rolled into Hollywood. Traffic was heavier here, with cruisers, club-goers and Sunday-night insomniacs out in force. This is probably where the line, "Cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes" from the Doors song was conceived. Everybody's here to be seen, but everybody's looking too. The two machines would face their first big trial here, and both passed, because everybody, even the weary-looking hookers, turned to look. But when we had to stop in front of a line waiting to get into the Whiskey, you could tell which bike was getting more and longer looks. Men point and women smile, more of them at the Vegas. Maybe our unit's red paint just looks more beguiling in the street lights' hollow glow, but it seems pretty clear that Victory, whose first bike couldn't catch an eye in a crowd of motorcyclists even before any of them had ever seen one, has gotten it right this time.

As we'd hear again and again, the Vegas is a stunning-looking motorcycle. Sure, the optional billet wheels on our test unit help, but there is plenty to please the eye. New, more shapely fork sliders embrace the 21-inch front wheel that defines these bikes. Several pundits said that they preferred the front end of the Deuce because it looked longer and lighter, in part because it's capped with a headlight that's smaller than the big two-bulb reflector beam of the Vegas.

But in a turn-about, the Victory's engine drew the lion's share of aesthetic praise. The original Victory engine was crudely finished, but new suppliers make the late-style Freedom engine much prettier than before. Putting the airbox under the tank offended traditionalists but impressed free-thinkers who felt the engine looked cleaner without that big chrome oval hanging on its right side, as on the H-D. No one liked the bit of plastic airbox protruding from the front of the Vegas tank, but many overlooked it while exclaiming over the tank itself. With pretty curves and scallops that are sculpted into instead of painted on the sides, it catches your attention in profile. From the rear or top, it seduces you with its split-tail shape where it converges with the seat and with the spine that runs its length and is picked up again behind the seat to run to the tip of the rear fender. "It looks custom for sure," was the way one envious-looking gawker summed it up.

The shapely foot controls and brackets also earned points for the Vegas. The side panel treatment was a split decision. The Deuce's chrome panels looked "garish" to some "good" to others, and some complained that the Vegas side covers didn't mesh with the lines of the rest of the painted parts. By comparison to the Vegas, the full-length chrome tank console of the Deuce looks kind of tired. The flush-mounted LED taillight of the Vegas also sparked more smiles than the low-profile red lens on the Deuce. Both bikes have minimized their turn signals, but the rubber mounts on the Vegas droop to make the signals a bit uneven, an irritating detail. The harum-scarum arrangement of its cables is also troubling. Harley does a much cleaner job.

Waiting at for lights on the Strip, we also heard the word "low" directed at the Vegas more than once. It's true -- the saddle digs way down into the frame, so that virtually anybody can comfortably sit flat-footed. Rearranging the rear suspension with a single vertical damper and linkage has given room to drop the saddle and also challenge the Softail rear suspension of the Deuce for cleanliness and style. But the valley of the Vegas saddle sits forward, and it turns up in back just where medium and taller riders would like to plant their butts, making the seat uncomfortable immediately. You might not sit so low on the Deuce, but you're sitting pretty, or at least pretty comfortably. Its saddle accommodates a wider variety of shapes and sizes and feels good for a long time. Only riders who fit the Vegas seat just right were happy after 20 or 30 minutes.

Heading west, the Sunset Strip comes to an abrupt end at the Beverly Hills city limits. Clubs, show biz offices and lingerie showrooms give way to monster mansions and big trees. The road is wide and straight and soon next to deserted. You might be tempted to open it up here to see who's got motor, but we weren't. We knew about those Beverly Hills cops who lurk in the shadows just inside the alleys with radar guns. Instead we shifted up to fifth and kept the rpm down and the speed under 40.

Ticking along at that speed, both engines feel strong, smooth and responsive. Yeah, you could shift down for more punch, but it's not needed, and when a couple of miles later Sunset veers right and leaves Beverly Hills for less-policed L.A., we just opened the throttles without shifting, picking up speed for the twisting, plunging road that runs all the way to the ocean.

In those first few corners, the Vegas rider began to feel cocky. Responsive, precise steering and better suspension control promised an opportunity to romp on the Deuce. But then we got to the fast carousel behind the Playboy mansion and as we dove into it, the Vegas began grinding hard, its right peg bracket throwing a shower of sparks, unweighting the front wheel just slightly and making its rider suddenly sober. The Deuce requires more steering effort to initiate and hold a turn (though we never really thought of it as heavy-steering until we compared it to the Vegas), but its front end does a better job of conveying confidence. When the Vegas bottomed out, the Deuce had the edge for a moment until it too reached its clearance limit, albeit with a bit less spectacle.

A couple of derisive remarks were exchanged at the next light, and then we were back into the road, winding past UCLA and up through the curve that used to be sung about as Dead Man's.

With each turn we adjusted to the bikes, and by the time we were running down through the last few corners approaching the San Diego Freeway overpass, we were moving along smartly again. Those turns provide their own tests, with an unven surface that makes suspensions and frames work hard. The Deuce, which we continue to rate as a good-handling cruiser, to our surprise, wallowed a little bit as if its chassis was bending fractionally under the forces. The Vegas was tight and solid, a tad too solid. On the sharp-edged bumps, its ride bordered on harsh, making us slow despite the precise steering. You worry that it will be jarred off the line you are trying to steer.

Shortly past the freeway, we made a quick detour to drag the bikes around the Bristol Circles, then swapped saddles and tried it again. A few quick laps and we scurried back to Sunset, having confirmed that the Vegas is a bit shy of cornering clearance.

The rider who just left the Harley added another observation. "This [the Vegas] shifts a lot better than that thing."

Victory has obviously been hard at work on taming its once scary-noisy gear-shifting (making dozens of changes just this year on top of previous improvements) and has come up with a gearbox that is not only reasonably quiet but also shifts smoothly and lightly. Our Deuce by comparison was somewhat stiff and uncertain, not typical of previous examples. Finding the Harley's neutral was sometimes a slight challenge. Harley's heavy clutch pull is still in evidence, making the light clutch action of the Vegas that much more pronounced.

Banishing the Victory's gearbox woes may have created a bit of play in the gearbox, especially lower gears, because the Vegas takes up lash with a bit of a jerk when you make quick throttle transitions, making it challenging to ride smoothly, especially in town or on roads like this where you are making constant throttle adjustments. The choppy throttle response makes for head-banging with a passenger if you aren't very deliberate with the throttle.