The Harley-Davidson Iron 1200: Good, Dumb, Fun

My Sportster Iron 1200 is dumb and fun to ride. Just like your mom.

And now that I finally had the chance to kind of get to know her a little bit, I realized she’s a very peculiar woman that is both absolutely wonderful and, at the same time, kind of one hot piece of garbage.

I’m Adrian from YouMotorcycle. I’ve been riding for almost 20 years. I’ve been working in the motorcycle industry for almost 15 years. And these are my brutally honest first impressions of the 2019 Harley-Davidson Iron Sportster Iron 1200.

First, let me set the stage for you. I do a lot of two-up riding with the missus. I’ve taken her to Montreal, Quebec City and back, and Rome, all over Italy. You name it. We do big two-up trips together.

But on the Iron 1200, you can’t take a pretty brunette for a motorcycle ride ride away, you’ll have to do a couple things first…

I bought a Harley-Davidson Badlander gel seat for this Sportster Iron 1200 used, because Harley sells this motorcycle with no passenger seat, so that Harley-Davidson can make more money selling you a passenger seat should you decide that you want one later. So the rear seat is sold separately. And this started a domino effect of mods as a result.

If you buy a two-up seat, you’ll also need to buy passenger pegs because passenger pegs are sold separately—because that’s how Harley does things.

If you buy passenger pegs, you’ll have to take off your exhaust pipes because the exhaust has to come off to install them. Because that’s how Harley-Davidson likes to do things.

If you remove the exhaust, you may as well also upgrade the exhaust at the same time. Because – that one’s on me. That’s how I like to do things.

And if the exhausts are off, honestly, now is a good time to install forward controls because comfort. And because if you want to install forward controls, the exhaust has to come off anyway, because that too, is how Harley-Davidson does thing.

So I’m driving all over the city. I’m getting a deal on a used part here, getting a deal on a used part there, shopping online for some other stuff. I finally got all the parts in. I do all the work myself. I install everything. And it makes me genuinely remember how much I enjoy working on Harley-Davidson Sportsters.

And that’s no sarcasm, no joke. My first motorcycle that I really started working on was a Sportster, in my first garage, with my first tool set. My dog would stay next to me for hours while I tried to figure out how things worked. I would take it apart and then try and quickly put it back together so I could still ride to work in the morning. I taught myself how to wrench on a Sportster.

So all this work that I was doing, it brought me back to that time, and that place in my life, and honestly, it brought some happiness in my heart and in my mind. And that was a heartwarming experience.

When the work was finally done and I got to take this thing out for a ride, when everything was complete, my first impressions on the ride were: “Wow. I forgot just how awful Sportsters are.”

But I also kind of forgot how much fun they are too, right?

This motorcycle, it’s both so subpar in so many areas, but also so rich.

It’s so stupid, but also so wonderful.

On your first ride on a Sportster, you’re going to be puzzled, like, trying to process that this thing is both really nimble but also completely lacking in actual handling precision.

The finish of the whole bike is done to champagne tastes, but the rear suspension is done to a Mr. Noodles budget.

It’s got torque that wants to just get up and go, but it’s got brakes that don’t want to make it stop.

It’s both visually kind of frail and small-looking, but it’s got this big 1200cc motor that doesn’t just shake inside of the frame ’cause it’s rubber mounted, it shakes everything around it.

People tell you, “Don’t get the 883. Get the 1200 if you want to go on the highway, brother!” But the minute you take this motorcycle on the highway, all you want to do is take the next exit off.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this motorcycle. I have a lot of fun on it. But this motorcycle is a rolling contradiction. For South Park fans, it’s what we call a Chewbacca defense, because “that does not make sense!”

When I came home from that first ride, after I did all this work… I took it out, I came home, and the missus came to greet me: “How was it?”

I said, “The bike is awful.”

And she’s all, “Oh no, I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, like, it was awful, but, like, I love it. Everything about it is dumb and fun to ride.” I told her.

This girl looks me dead in the eye and she says, “Just like your mom.”

That’s my girl. And those are my thoughts on my 2019 Harley-Davidson Sportster Iron 1200. Let me know if there was something you agree with or disagree with.

Obviously I will be doing a full review of the Sportster Iron 1200, after I put more miles on it and get a lot more experience with it.

Today I just wanted to share these initial thoughts with you guys, because I told you guys, after the whole Best Mid-Size Retro Motorcycle series first that I was going to keep the Moto Guzzi, and then later that I was selling the Moto Guzzi for the Harley-Davidson. I felt like I owed it to you to let you know how that’s working out for me.

I’m not quite ready to give any kind of final thoughts on whether it was a good deal or not for me. But I’m enjoying it. It’s a stupid bike, but it’s a fun bike. So I’m cool with that. I have other bikes for doing serious jobs.

If you’re still here, I just want to shout out one clip towards the end of the video you should check out. Because I know there’s going to be some Harley fanboys leaving me a comment like, “It’s not stupid! You’re stupid!” So this one’s for you:

The Sportster should be an easy motorcycle to work on right? No fairings, everything’s right there in front of you, even your spark plugs. Nothing is hidden. Easy, right? You’d think it was easy to work on.

But this bike gets stuck.

I can’t even bring the Iron 1200 onto my motorcycle table lift without having to get a 2x6x8 that I have to put down every time I want to get this bike on the lift because there is so little ground clearance. The motorcycle just gets stuck, like a beached boat stuck in the sand. It’ll just sit there. It’s not going to fall over. There’s nothing holding it up either. It is literally stuck in place.

So what should be an easy motorcycle to work on ends up becoming a difficult motorcycle to work on because it’s stupid… But it is fun to ride.

Anyway, as always, thank you so much for watching. I’m Adrian from YouMotorcycle. Please consider subscribing to YouMotorcycle on YouTube, or at the very least hitting that like button. That would really help me a lot.

Ride safe, but have fun!

Adrian