ALPHA AND OMEGA: RIDING THE LAST OF HARLEY-DAVIDSON’S DYNAS AND THE FIRST OF ITS NEW 2018 SOFTAILS
One of the most famous passages in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the book that first espoused his now widely accepted theory of evolution, was quickly removed by him because of the public ridicule it received. In this passage he explained how he could imagine a land-based mammal like the North American black bear transforming through millennia of evolution into an aquatic creature like a whale. His exact words were: “I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.” It led to expressions of outrage by the already scornful creationists that viewed his writing and scientific research as satanic. And not since Darwin attempted to demonstrate how black bears wandering ever further into water in an attempt to find more fish might adapt to their environment to become whales has the world witnessed such apoplectic controversy — until the launch of the new Harley-Davidson 2018 motorcycle line-up.
What was the source of the furore, the interweb rants and social media turmoil that collectively felt like the equivalent of the denizens of Ingolstadt trying to batter the doors of Victor Frankenstein’s home and dispatch him and his ‘creature’ for their crimes against humanity? The fact that Harley-Davidson have merged their two most iconic Big Twin lines, the Softail, a configuration meant to evoke a rigid frame bike, and the Dyna, a more simple
