Harley-Davidson recently unveiled the Iron 883 as the latest addition to its phantom Dark Custom line. The Darks aren’t a separate model line, but more like a sinister club or collection of single models culled from Harley’s prolific arsenal of existing V-Twins: the Dynas, Sportsters and Softails.
The underpinning theme with a Dark is pared-down, no-nonsense styling, eschewing chrome and brightness in favor of muted, basic color schemes – namely black. And for a few of them there’s a decidedly deliberate chopped and bobbed influence.
As a theme, Dark Custom didn’t make an official appearance until the January 2008 introduction of a Softail Springer that received the chopped/bobbed/black-out treatment and the name Cross Bones. It was at this Hollywood premiere-style unveiling of the ‘Bones that Willie G. Davidson and son Bill told the motor-world about the birth of this new shadow series of motorcycles.
Long before its official coming out party, the development of the Dark line started taking shape when the Softail Night Train showed up, and then a VRSC model, the Night Rod Special, went bad-ass in black. Soon thereafter the 1200cc Sportster-based Nightster appeared in the first half of 2007. The Iron 883 marks the second Sportster model to join the Dark Customs and follows closely to the Nightster’s motif.
To help jump start the introduction of the Iron 883 into the Dark Custom line, Harley-Davidson showcased the bike as part of an art gallery opening this past Saturday at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. The media got an early look on Friday, February 6th.
The theme of the gallery opening was “The Art of Rebellion,” and included 10 contemporary fringe artists, each creating a custom-painted Harley gas tank in conjunction with the gallery theme. Among invited creative types was street artist Shepard Fairey, most notable for his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker that later evolved into the “OBEY Giant” collection. Fairey recently resurged in notoriety by creating the now-iconic Barack Obama HOPE posters used extensively in the former presidential candidate’s successful campaign for the Oval Office.
Harley chose the gallery theme to mirror what it calls the “modern rebel culture” that was emerging around the time of the original introduction of the Sportster line in 1957. Indeed, H-D was clearly drawn to the original bobber style when it first penned the Iron 883. Though the bike is essentially a Sportster 883 Low, Harley was able to shorten overall length by three inches and shave 18 pounds off the Low’s claimed running order weight of 583 pounds.
Black, black and more black – Cash would’ve liked the Iron 883. |
