Fit For Everyone: Here's How Harley-Davidson Pan America's Smart Ride Lowering Suspension Works

The Harley-Davidson Pan America is, without a doubt, one of the great unknowns of this 2021. The first maxitrail motorcycle from Milwaukee is coming and little by little the American firm is letting us know more about its peculiarities.

It's big, it's deceptively capable, and it's aesthetically weird, but it's also arguably one of the most technically advanced Harley-Davidsons, including, among other things, an interesting intelligent adaptive suspension system.

The Harley-Davidson Pan America points to the forefront

At Harley-Davidson they are laying almost all of their eggs in the basket of the new Harley-Davidson Pan America. After years losing steam with a catalog made up exclusively of models designed to satisfy its most loyal customers and without new generations to replace them, the brand is trying to relaunch itself with innovative products in its catalog.

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First it was the Harley-Davidson LiveWire, and then this new batch of motorcycles from unexplored segments for those in Milwaukee where the Pan America lives and also the appetizing naked called Bronx. At least until the Bronx mysteriously disappeared without a trace, after lower wages and production delays. And that with the Sportster, its best-selling model, vanishing from the catalog in Europe.

It is not surprising that Harley-Davidson is deploying its resources so that Pan America is as successful as possible in capturing customers in the maxitrail market. A segment in which they have never participated and have decided to enter with a very personal proposal, but aiming high, with technology standards that aim to be up to the competition.

And it is that if there is a segment where technology has become a fundamental pillar, it is that of the maxitrail, more asphaltic or more adventurous. There are the Ducati Multistrada V4 with its advances from MotoGP and double radar or the KTM 1290 Super Adventure S and R, both with an overwhelming level of technology.

This is where Harley-Davidson Pan America wants to launch its networks and from which we can now discover something more thanks to the small microsite that the company has launched. There we have been able to learn more about the optional electronic suspension system that it uses with the so-called Adaptive Ride Height (ARH).

This system is optional, and can only be associated with the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 Special, that is, the variant equipped with semi-active electronic suspensions. Logical. Building on that point, Harley-Davidson claims to be the first brand to equip this system. A gadget that has a fairly simple premise: adjust the suspensions in motion to maintain ground clearance and seat height.

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This is not its strong point since, for example, the Ducati Skyhook system or the BMW Motorrad ESA do something similar. The question comes when it comes to stopping. The Pan America has the seat located at 868 - 894 mm in height, a rather imposing figure (the Multistrada V4 has it at 840 - 860 mm) for a motorcycle that exceeds 250 kg in running order.

Well, what the ARH does is that when slowing down to stop the bike, the suspensions lower and leave the seat at 855 mm in height (a reduction of 35 mm) to allow riders of all heights to reach the ground with greater security.

The ARH system also has several operating modes:

At a technical level we cannot offer much more detail, since the brand has not detailed how these adjustments are made, and that they do affirm that the ARH reduces the height without affecting the suspension travel or the operation of the adaptive suspension. A suspension that has five modes within its electronic regulations:

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Every time we know a little more about this peculiar American maxitrail. A motorcycle that will arrive shortly with an unprecedented engine, a two-cylinder called Revolution Max 1250 with 150 CV and 128 Nm of torque and a price already confirmed for our market that will start at 16,990 euros and 19,600 euros for the Special version.

See complete gallery » Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 2021 (12 photos)

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