Harley-Davidson's Best Seller of 2022: The Street Glide Special

2022 is the year the engine that would eventually redefine the Street Glide first appeared in a bike you did not have to buy a CVO to get. It is also the year Harley ended the air cooled Sportster in North America. The Street Glide Special led the lineup through both, on the older engine, unchanged.

The sourcing caveat, stated once and then left alone. Model level unit sales are not something Harley publishes, so nobody can prove which single SKU led 2022. What exists is the family shipment table from Harley's own filings and the company's choice of what to talk about. On that evidence the Street Glide Special is the consensus answer, and the Road Glide sits close enough that nobody should claim daylight between them.

The 2022 Street Glide Special

Mechanically a carryover: Milwaukee-Eight 114, 1868cc, 118 lb-ft at 3,250 rpm, 26.1 inch laden seat and 27.2 unladen, 827 lb. Base price in Vivid Black rose to $27,449, up $350 on 2021.

That $350 arrived in a year with no mechanical changes to the motorcycle, and it is the middle step of three consecutive rises that carried the Special from $27,099 in 2021 to $27,999 in 2023. The bike stood still. The sticker did not.

The interesting detail is what the Special did not get. In the same model year Harley put the Milwaukee-Eight 117 into two non CVO motorcycles, and the Street Glide Special was not one of them. The volume bike stayed on the 114 for two more years while the bigger engine was tested at the top of the range.

As with 2020 and 2021, the Street Glide and Street Glide Special were still separate SKUs in MY2022, and the Special is the likelier individual leader of the pair.

The 117 escapes CVO, and the Sportster goes

January 2022 brought the Street Glide ST and the Road Glide ST, the first time the Milwaukee-Eight 117 appeared outside CVO. April brought the Nightster on the Revolution Max 975T. At the top of the range, more engine became available without CVO money. At the bottom, something was about to be removed.

The legacy air cooled Sportster 883 and 1200 were discontinued in North America at the end of 2022. That is Harley's own account, given in its FY2023 release, and the consequence shows up in the shipment table a year later. Sport and Lightweight shipped 33,894 units in 2022 and 18,228 in 2023, a 46% fall that Harley itself attributed to the discontinuation.

Grand American Touring in the same window went from 89,849 to 92,683, up 3.2%. Cruiser held around 59,010 in 2022. So while one end of the lineup was being deleted, the touring end was growing, and it was growing on an engine that Harley had just proved it was willing to replace.

Adventure Touring shipped 10,774 in 2022, its high point across these six years and the only time it cleared 10,000 units. Set that against 5,128 in 2023 and 4,535 in 2024. The Pan America peaked and the air cooled Sportster left within roughly twelve months of each other, and neither event moved the touring platform in either direction.

That is what makes 2022 the hinge year rather than a quiet one. Read forward from it and everything that happens to Harley's model mix through 2025 is already visible: the small bikes leave, the touring platform absorbs the share, and the 117 moves downward through the range until it is standard. For the wider market that year, see our best selling motorcycles of 2022 roundup.

What the ST tells you about the Special

If you are shopping a 2022 today, the ST is the useful comparison rather than a rival brand. Same model year, same platform, same chassis, larger engine. The Special was the volume choice at $27,449. The ST was the preview of where the entire model line went two years later.

That fork is worth thinking about before you buy. A 2022 Special is a well understood motorcycle with three model years of identical siblings on either side of it, which is good for parts and good for knowing what wears out. A 2022 ST is the earlier, rarer route to the engine that became standard in 2024. Neither is the wrong answer. They are answers to different questions, and 2022 is the only year in this run where both were on the floor at the same time.

The Nightster is the other half of the same year. It launched in April 2022 on the Revolution Max 975T, into roughly the space the air cooled 883 was about to leave. Whether it held that space is answered by the Sport and Lightweight column across the following two years: 33,894, then 18,228, then 12,335. Whatever the Nightster achieved, the segment kept falling.

It is also worth checking what the competition was doing while Harley was reorganizing its own range, which we covered in Harley vs Indian vs Honda vs BMW, 2022.

The Street Glide Special won 2022 by staying exactly as it was, in the year everything around it moved.

Cover photo: "Harley-Davidson Street Glide parked at Hogs for Hospice, Leamington, Ontario, 2025-08-02 04" by Chris Woodrich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.