Post Sale Update: This XR sold for $20,303 after 32 bids on eBay.
The XR750 is one of Harley-Davidson’s most iconic motorcycles – though it was never intended to be street legal. But what if Harley took a XR motor and shoved it in a Sportster frame? Willie G himself had a similar thought, and the XR1000 was born. It would pair the new-for-82 XLX chassis with a motor that retained the Sportster bottom end but got fancy pieces up top. This combined with Dell’Orto carbs yielded a 20 horsepower bump from the stock Sportster, good for 67 ponies.
If you wanted more, you could even order a race kit from Harley with upgrades to the exhaust, cams, and compression ratio that was supposedly good for a total of 95 horsepower. Ignoring the race kit, the XR1000 cost just under $7,000 (a base XLX was $4,000). The steep price did not encourage massive sales, and less than 1,800 examples were sold in ’83 and ’84. For reasons I’ll never understand, the ’83 bikes were only available in grey. A year later Harley decided to also offer orange and black. For more on the old XR1000, check out this excellent article from Motorcycle Classics, where Clement Salvadori tries to determine if it was a Sportster for the track or an XR750 for the street.
Find this XR1000 for sale in Banning, California with bidding up to $9,000 and the reserve not yet met
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