With the 1584cc Twin Cam 96B engine the new Harley Davidson Softail Crossbones is true to tradition. It is a mighty fine piece of American engineering, six speed cruise drive suspension. It is a nice bike at a very nice price... $16,795. The Harley-Davidson Softail Cross Bones is sure to be another head turner. The design is reminiscent of those bike commonly used by open road bikers but more polished and refined. The Harley-Davidson FLSTSB boasts of a Black andPolished Twin Cam 96B powertrain, unique Softail suspension, and a 6-speed Cruise Drive transmission. The Harley-Davidson FLSTSB Softail Cross Bones motorcycle also has a 5 gallon fuel tank. FLSTSB Cross Bones features: Rigid-mount, 1584 cc Twin Cam 96B balanced engine Electronic Sequential Port Fuel Injection (ESPFI) Gloss Black painted Springer front end with chrome springs Chopped front fender with striping Bobtail rear fender with striping Laced Steel front and rear wheels with Gloss Black painted rims

Half-round old-school foot boards Horseshoe oil tank with Harley-Davidson patent badge Gloss Black mini ape-hanger handlebar 6-speed Cruise Drive transmission Gloss Black cat-eye tank console with new speedometer face Gloss Black round air cleaner cover, oil tank and rear fender supports Distinctive five-gallon fuel tank with hand-laced leather tank panel andsylvania automotive headlight restoration kit review 200 mm rear tiresimcity 4 air pollution cleaner Black powder-coated engine with polished rocker box covers and pushrods and untreated finsair purifier mildew smell Straight shot exhaust with chrome slash-cut mufflers Adjustable sprung solo seat with leather lacing

26.6-inch seat height Optional Smart Security SystemDARK CUSTOM is the name Harley-Davidson has chosen for a new design theme it is applying to a series of blacked-out retro-look models. The styling treatment, said Andy Benka, the company’s director of market outreach, is intended to appeal to younger riders and to evoke the company’s earlier days, when the association of motorcycles and rebelliousness was much closer.“There is a visceral feeling to them,” Mr. Benka, an affable young man with rock-star-length hair, said of the bikes.Harley displayed the Dark Customs, including the new-for-’08 Cross Bones, the most extreme development of the look, at a huge space in the Chelsea gallery district of Manhattan last month. Appropriate for the neighborhood, the Dark Custom bikes were dressed mostly in black — not the chrome and gleaming paint traditionally used on Harleys — in both matte and gloss finishes on their air-cleaner covers, oil tanks, handlebars and even the wheels.

To describe the new models, the designers repeatedly use words like gritty and grungy; they say that these are back-to-basics bikes, made to get dirty and roughed up.The bikes were deliberately positioned like sculptures in a garden, and as I strolled among them I could barely bring myself to touch the paint. Matte or not, the finish looked as if it would highlight every fingerprint. The Dark Custom bikes all belong to style families with long histories in Harley production and lore, but their shiniest bits have for the most part been darkened with matte or crinkle-finish black paint. The Nightster, introduced last year, is a variant of the Sportster family. The Cross Bones, an addition to the Softail line, makes its statement with a bicycle-style solo seat and reach-for-the-sky handlebars that Harley calls mini ape-hangers.The Night Rod Special is the most modern in appearance, with black metal mesh and colored pinstripe trim on the front wheel. The Night Train exhibits a pert flip at the end of its “bobtail” rear fender.

The Fat Bob and Street Bob are bobbers, named for their shortened fenders — bobbed, in the Harley vernacular — in a style established in the late 1940s. Still, every time I heard the term Dark Custom, I thought about Special Dark, the name Hershey’s uses for a chocolate bar. Dark as they are, with only accents of brightness, the Harley Dark Customs suggest precision machines, the refinement of a century-long tradition. They put me in mind of expensive optical instruments — cameras or microscopes or even musical instruments.Willie G. Davidson, Harley’s chief styling officer and a deity to the brand’s fans, said in a telephone interview that the Dark Customs were meant to recall the bikes of the years just after World War II, when riders took military-surplus machines and stripped away all the excess to remove weight.“Those bikes had a kind of a crude look,” Mr. Davidson said. “They took paint off; they took parts off. They established a visual that remains very popular.”

Mr. Davidson invoked the year 1947 — he owns a 1947 bobber himself — which was the date of an infamous disturbance, much magnified in press reports, in Hollister, Calif., that solidified the outlaw image of motorcycles. (In the 1953 film “The Wild One,” inspired by the Hollister events, Marlon Brando rode a Triumph, while Lee Marvin and his gang rode Harleys. )The 1200 Nightster, introduced last year, is the Sportster line’s Dark Custom entry. The bike’s designer, Rich Christoph, compared it to a favorite pair of jeans you don’t mind messing up. The new bikes were presented in January at a party in the Viper Room in Los Angeles, a location once associated with the dark side of Hollywood. (Fifteen years ago, the actor River Phoenix died of an overdose after leaving the club.) While the designers responsible for developing the Dark Custom look chose to emphasize words like raw, bare-bones and stripped-down in describing the style, the bikes were also created with attention to details that recall Harley traditions.

Kirk Rasmussen, Harley’s manager of styling and the primary designer of the Cross Bones, explained that while the paint pinstriping is done on the assembly line, it maintains authenticity “right down to its imperfections.” These elements “are very old school,” Mr. Rasmussen said. “They are very dear to us.”I asked whether owners of the new bikes could really bring themselves to get them muddy and dirty, and allow the paint to get scuffed and scratched.Ray Drea, senior director of styling, insisted that they would. “One of the paints is called denim,” he said. “It is designed to be roughed and rubbed off.” He and other designers compared the bikes to a pair of jeans that the owner is happy to wear into a personal pattern, fitting the body.In addition to history, the Dark Custom line is inspired by more recent times — and its dark look may have origins in dark news. Motorcycle sales in this country fell in 2007 after years of steady growth; and Harley’s sales decreased 1.8 percent worldwide and 6.2 percent in the United States in 2007, the company reported.

On Thursday, the company announced that domestic sales fell 12.8 percent in the first quarter. Harley said it would reduce production and cut its work force.In addition, with a median age of buyers hovering around 46, Harley has been fighting an image as the bike for older riders, more likely to resemble your in-laws than outlaws, and likelier to be lawyers than lawbreakers. The median age for all bike buyers was 42 in 2003, says the Motorcycle Industry Council, the latest year for which numbers are available. Mr. Benka, who began his career with Harley-Davidson as a certified public accountant, said the new bikes were aimed at riders under 35. The company said the Night Train, the Nightster and the Street Bob are consistently purchased by a larger percentage of young adults than are other Harley models. Younger buyers may also be put off by their impression of Harley prices, he noted, adding that one of the Dark Customs, the Nightster, sells for $9,965 — far less than the company’s fully equipped touring machines, which can run as much as $35,000.Mr. Davidson, known for his attention to design detail, has closely supervised not only the new bikes but the graphics used to publicize and market them.

He drew and signed the skull-and-crossbones logo for the line.But this is a long way from pirate or Goth: the crossed bones could be wrenches. And the skull and bones are so softly drawn they could come from a children’s storybook; He devised another logo based on the numeral one, used by the company when it was owned by AMF, the sporting goods conglomerate, from 1969 to 1981. Again Mr. Davidson added a skull, but instead of looking sinister, it recalls the innocence of a Sunday comic — specifically Skull Cave in the strip The Phantom.But Mr. Davidson insists that the company is in touch with what its customers want. He attends many motorcycle shows and owner gatherings.“The designs come from the people, “ he said. “We see thousands of bikes. We are so immersed in this culture that we know what is timely.”Harley has long been renowned for the power of its brand. But if for one generation Hollister suggests outlaw bikers, for another younger one it is best known as the name of a chain of clothing stores operated in malls by Abercrombie & Fitch.