Harley-Davidson Pan America 975 in the pipeline

Harley-Davidson looks to be in the process of expanding its adventure bike line with the introduction of two new middleweight Pan America ADV models. Both bikes are expected to be based on the new liquid-cooled, 975cc Revolution Max 975T engine, which was recently unveiled in the new 2022 Harley-Davidson Nightster power-cruiser model in markets abroad yesterday.

Motorcycle.com has reported the listing of two bikes with the codenames RA975 and RA965S on the official Harley-Davidson website, and seeing as the codenames RA1250 and RA1250S are used for the Pan America 1250 and Pan America 1250 Special models, after putting two and two together, we can safely assume RA975 to be the name for a new, smaller displacement Pan America 975. Although the Nighster and the incoming Pan Am will be powered by the same, smaller displacement version of the engine, we think that that recently launched power-cruiser is ideally tuned to produce better torque (95Nm), while the motor in the incoming middle-weight Pan Am could be tuned to churn out less torque, but more than the Nightster's 89PS.

Now about the second bike with the codename RA965S.  In Harley-speak, the S at the end of the name usually implies 'special' or a more equipped and better specced version of the bike. It appears that Harley-Davidson is taking a slightly different approach to naming their bikes from their ADV adversaries BMW Motorrad. While BMW has the F 750 GS, a slightly more road-biased, less-equipped  version of the top spec F 850 ??GS ADV model, Harley could be naming its higher spec model the Pan America 965 Special - with a lower number to its name. Whatever the case may be, news of Americans making their way to a table that's already occupied by the British (Triumph Tiger 900) and Germans (BMW F 850 GS) for a slice of market pie, can never be a bad thing. After all, there are many like us who feel that the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 Special to be the most fun bike to have ever rolled out of an H-D production line, so a down-sized version of the bike is equally exciting. Seeing as the ADV segment is all the rage now-a-days, once production starts, the new Pan Am models will most likely be introduced in India as well. Of course we expect more details on Harley-Davidson's new adventure bikes to emerge very soon. So stay tuned for that.