Congrats to RoHorn, who was the first person to identify that this fuel filler belongs to the rare Harley-Davidson Nova Prototype! The what, you say? Come find out!
Let’s go back to the 1970s – Harley-Davidson was planning for the future, realizing that it could be tough for their existing air-cooled V-Twin engines to meet ever-tightening noise and emissions regulations. Their solution was two fold:
1. build an updated air-cooled twin (what we now know as the Evolution)
2. build a liquid-cooled engine that would spawn a new series of higher-performance motorcycles (meet the Nova)
The first Nova was a 800cc 60° V-4, which was supposed to be released in 1981 to compete in the 750cc class. Harley claimed 100 hp/l (so 80hp in this case), and future plans included the motor split in half (400cc V-2), a 1,000cc V-4, and even a 1,500cc V-6!
Obviously, none of this came to fruition, but there was a rare example available to view at the Deeley Motorcycle Exhibition. Vy and I stopped by on a recent trip to Vancouver and this was my favorite bike in the collection due to its historical significance. I’ll share some more bikes from this fantastic place soon, but for now let’s continue with the Nova. If you want more history on the bike, check out this excellent story on Hagerty by Roland Brown! I’m going to just hit some summary points as excuses to share more photos below:
We’ll start with the fuel filler location that triggered the Guess That Bike post in the first place – the fuel tank was located under the seat.
This was because Harley wanted the stereotypical tank location for something else. Knowing that their customers would likely find the styling changes required by liquid-cooling off-putting, they chose the hide the radiator horizontally under the seat. The fake “tank” was actually an airbox with two intake scoops.
Again, I highly recommend you check out the Hagerty article so you can learn about Porsche’s involvement (which ended up leading to how they were part of the V-Rod), what inspired the whole thing in the first place, and why it unfortunately died out.
“It was a shame Nova didn’t make it, but you have to move on,” [Mike Hillman, Nova project leader] said. “I’d like to think it would have augmented the V-twins. But the investment Harley made in getting the factories to work properly at that time, and the focus on improved quality with the Evolution models, were vital to the company’s growth. Scrapping Nova was undoubtedly the right decision.”
For many years, Trevor Deeley was the exclusive Harley distributor in Canada and he eneded up becoming one of just three non-Americans to serve on their board. As you can see from the plaque on this bike, the company obviously thought he was something special:
