Touring Street Glide ST (MY2022)

Here's where the ST asks something of you. The saddle comes first: it's firmer than anyone stepping off a typical touring Harley will be braced for, and while an hour is no trouble, a full day has me hunting for a new position by afternoon. The heft is the other honest cost. Rolling, it carries itself beautifully, but paddling through a parking lot or lining up a U-turn wants a confident hand, and a rider unsure of themselves at a crawl will feel every pound of it. At a fast highway pace the wind reaches the bars ahead of the fairing, so the front goes slightly numb in the hands. The upright, arms-out stance suits me nearly everywhere, though a genuinely tight bend asks for reach shorter arms won't love. Against all that, the cockpit stays clean in the head: everything falls where I expect, and the low-rpm shudder reads as texture I'd miss if it vanished.

What impressed me is how settled it stays when I brake mid-corner. Grab a real handful while the bike is already tracking through a bend and it holds its line instead of standing up or getting nervous. Engine braking, brake force, and bias all stay managed as the lean angle builds, so the stop feels predictable and reachable rather than something you have to tiptoe around. For a machine this size, that composure under load is what lets me lean on the brakes with confidence.

The nuance that stuck with me sits down at the bottom of the throttle. Riders with real miles on older Milwaukee iron may find the low-end response a shade too civilized for what the big-bore hardware promises. Coming off almost anything else, though, it still lands raw and alive, convincingly Harley, just without the hair-trigger snap the looks lead you to expect. What it does deliver is drive that shrugs off the bike's bulk and a close, pressurized intake note that sits right in the saddle with you rather than trailing behind.

My read on ownership here comes down to what these bikes do on the used market. They simply don't get cheap. Anyone shopping secondhand feels the premium the moment they start comparing asking prices, and from an owner's seat that stubborn value is real protection: when trade-in day arrives, the ST gives back far more of its purchase price than most of what you could have parked beside it.

Fit the optional lean-sensitive setup and the electronics earn their place. The traction control reads lean angle and stays out of the way, no nagging, no showy cut-ins, just cleaner and more trustworthy drive out of a corner. It's clearly been calibrated by people who ride rather than bolted on to pad a brochure, and on a heavy machine like this that quiet competence counts for a lot in how willing I am to commit to a bend.

This is the trait I rate most confidently. The ST works on two fronts at once and shortchanges neither. On a slow afternoon I want to be out purely to be seen aboard something this deliberate, and the same machine will happily be pointed at a state line a long way off and asked to just go. The look does real work too: parked and silent, it lands as one considered piece rather than a pile of accessories, and that pulls at you before you've thrown a leg over.

The built-in navigation is the standout for daily use. It sits inside the cockpit layout as though it was planned there from the start, not wedged in as a late addition, and reading it on the move takes no hunting. Plenty of touring brands ship a nav setup that feels like an accessory catalog item; the way this one is folded into the dash is something a few of them could stand to study.