Is this a petrol-powered Harley-Davidson LiveWire?

HARLEY-DAVIDSON has just filed two new patents for bikes in the form of a café racer and a flat tracker.

The patents show what looks like a fairly complete bike, in that all the bodywork, suspension and chassis components look to be fully functional. It’s not clear which size engine Harley is looking to use, be it the 1275cc from the odd-looking Pan America adventure bike of the 975cc lump from the Bronx, although it is clearly the firm's Revolution Max powerplant.

The two bikes in the drawings both bear more than a passing resemblance to one of Harley’s latest and most ambitious projects, with the café racer machine looking eerily similar to the LiveWire electric machine we rode at the tail end of last year.

With sales of the LiveWire not breaking any records, it’s only sensible that Harley would want to warm the public up to the styling of the bike with a more conventional, petrol-powered machine.

If indeed it is the larger of the Revolution Max engines in the bike, we can expect performance figures of around 140bhp and 90ft-lb of torque from the bikes. And while they aren’t official figures from Harley-Davidson, they are the performance target set out by the brand prior to manufacturing and designing the unit.

With Harley trying to raise its game in the current world of motorcycles and gain a younger customer base, they have recently been testing the waters with brands like Brembo for bikes like the Pan America and the Bronx. If they want to cement the performance connotations of these new machines, we’d expect to see the same, high level of chassis tech employed on the new bikes.