It appears the beginning of the end is in sight for Harley-Davidson’s long-lived Sportster platform with the announcement that the Iron 883, Iron 1200 and Forty-Eight models will be discontinued in Australasia after the 2021 model year.
In a statement sent to onthrottle.co.nz Harley-Davidson Australia confirmed that the models would not return in 2022 due to a number of factors. “The Harley-Davidson brand continues to evolve, with MY21 shaping up to be a historic model year with innovative fleet additions including our first adventure model – the Pan America, our first-ever Icons range, featuring the Electra Glide Revival model as the debut in this series.
We do not take decision to discontinue models lightly and while all three models have been valuable contributions to our portfolio, we have seen lower demand over recent years.”
We’ve suspected for a while that the Sportster’s time was coming to an end, in its current air-cooled form at least.
The longest continuously running nameplate in the Harley-Davidson range traces its lineage back to 1957, with the current range of the Iron 883, Iron 1200 and Forty-Eight essentially unchanged since the Iron 1200 entered the market in 2018.
After being pulled from the European market in 2020 due to the engines not being Euro5 compliant and riders here favouring the new Softail line in dealerships, the writing was on the wall for the Sportster.
However, with the new Revolution Max 1250 V-twin (as seen in the soon to arrive Pan America) having been shown in a custom cruiser concept previously, we wouldn’t put money against the Sportster returning in water-cooled guise as a 2022 or 2023 model and going head-to-head with Indian’s Scout to on more even terms.
For now, there is still time to get on board the authentic Harley-Davidson experience that is the Sportster line with the 2021 model range already in dealers.