We missed last week's ride, and we hope you missed us too!

Sometimes life gets in the way of a good Sunday tradition, but we're back in the saddle and ready to hit the road again. So, grab your favourite coffee, settle into a comfy chair—or better yet, take the Harley for a cruise through the backroads and save this for when you get home.

Let’s take a V-Twins Sunday Run through an origin story – where did one of the world’s most influential motorcycles begin?

It’s the Softail, an incredibly successful and influential Harley-Davidson model range first produced and released as a single 1984 model, and taking the world by storm in Cruiser-Class motorcycles ever since.

Surprisingly, the Softail began outside of the Motor Company, when Bill Davis, a Harley rider, an engineer, but not a Motor Company employee, designed a “softail” frame in the mid-1970s.

Bill Davis obviously liked the visuals of older motorcycles, particularly the straight-line from steering head to rear axle look (which we noted in our 5^th July Sunday Run about the Harley 1936 EL model), and the absence of external shock absorbers which “broke-up” that line.

His first design had a cantilever swingarm pivoted at the bottom and sprung at the top, and Davis built a prototype based on his 1972 Super Glide. He patented the design and arranged to meet Willie G. Davidson in August 1976. The story goes that Willie G was impressed, but six months later, he said Harley-Davidson, although interested, would not use the design at that time.

Davis continued to develop his frames, switching the swingarm around so that the shock absorbers were underneath and the pivot point above. This allowed the traditional Harley-Davidson horseshoe oil tank to be placed under the seat. Davis attempted to produce the new design independently as the Road Worx Sub-Shock, but the business collapsed.

By now, however, Harley-Davidson Vice President of Engineering Jeff Bleustein was keen on Davis’ idea and the simplified traditional styling it offered, and Davis sold his patents, prototype, and tooling to the Motor Company in January 1982. After further testing and development within H-DMC, Davis' modified design was introduced as the 1984 Harley-Davidson FXST Softail.

As an aside, Jeff Bleustein (later CEO and Chairman of the H-D Board) was surely the right person, with the right skills, in the right job, at the right time, to see the potential of the Softail design. He had a Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, and a Master's degree and Doctorate PhD in engineering mechanics from Columbia University. Bleustein also spent five years as an associate professor of engineering and applied sciences at Yale University. An impressive rap sheet!

As is well known, the simple “Hardtail” look packaged within the complexity of the Softail frame gave the Motor Company the styling flexibility to introduce the most successful model range in its history. The tightly-coupled development and release of the Softail and the Evolution powertrain changed the motorcycling world.

Over time the original Softail was upgraded to an all-new but visually similar Softail frame in 2000 in conjunction with the Twin Cam B balanced engine… and eventually to the 2018 release of the mono-shock Softails and the Milwaukee-Eight engine.

The visual versatility in all three Softail platforms led to an astounding list of motorcycles, here are just some:

The Softail Standard, Softail Custom, the retro-styled Heritage Classic, the un-imaginably different Fat Boy, the brave release of the successful Softail Springer, Bad Boy, Heritage Springer... the Cow Glide Softail Nostalgia and its successors, Blackline, Slim, Cross Bones, Convertible, Deluxe, Breakout, the all-black Night Train, Softail Deuce, Rocker… and all the 2018 and up current models.

So, a quiet but deep thank you goes out from us at V-Twins to Bill Davis, also to Willie G and Jeff Bleustein, for their skill and vision at the genesis of every Harley-Davidson Softail.

Ride safely, and have a great Sunday Run and Sunday ride!