Harley-Davidson's Best Seller of 2024: The Redesigned Street Glide
Updated: Sep 2
2024 is the year the argument stops being interesting. Harley rebuilt the Street Glide from the ground up, put the Milwaukee-Eight 117 in it as standard, took weight out, and dropped the base price by about $2,000 against the bike it replaced. Then the company said in its own annual release that the new touring machines drove its US Touring market share to 74.5%.
One line on sourcing, because it carries less weight this year than in any other. Harley still does not publish model level units, so this is still a consensus pick rather than a measured result. What changed is that the company attached its own name to a claim about these specific motorcycles, which is closer to corroboration than anything available for 2020 through 2023. The pick is the same kind of pick. It is simply much better supported.
The 2024 Street Glide
First, the naming. For MY2024 Harley collapsed the Street Glide and the Street Glide Special into a single model, so from this year the answer is just the Street Glide. There is no Special to distinguish it from.
Milwaukee-Eight 117, 1923cc, 130 lb-ft at 3,250 rpm and 105 hp. Weight 811 lb, down from 827. Seat 26.1 inches laden and 28.1 unladen. A 12.3 inch TFT display running Skyline OS, four ride modes, rear suspension travel up to 3 inches, and a claimed 60% average reduction in helmet buffeting. Base price in Vivid Black $25,999, excluding freight of around $850.
Harley described the work as the most comprehensive product development in the touring platform in well over 10 years. Set the specs against the 2023 Special and the phrase holds up: 55cc more displacement, 12 lb-ft more torque, 16 lb less weight, and an entirely new dash and electronics architecture.
A redesign that arrived with a price cut
The unusual part is the money. More engine, more torque, less weight and a new electronics platform, and the base price went from $27,999 to $25,999. Manufacturers rarely do all four of those in the same model year, and almost never do the first three and the fourth together.
The freight caveat does not rescue the comparison either. The $25,999 excludes roughly $850 of it, and the $27,999 it replaced excluded freight on the same basis, so the gap survives intact. It is a reduction on the sticker rather than an accounting rearrangement, which is the part that makes it unusual.
Harley's own claim on the result: the launch of the new Street Glide and Road Glide touring motorcycles contributed to nearly 5% growth in the US Touring segment and drove the company's market share to 74.5%. That sentence is why 2024 is the strongest year in this series. It is not a model level sales figure, but it is the manufacturer naming these two motorcycles and attaching a measured share outcome to them.
The shipment table shows what was happening around that success. Total shipments were 148,862, well down from 179,984 in 2023. Grand American Touring took 85,757 of it, which is 57.6% of everything Harley shipped worldwide. Cruiser took 46,235, Sport and Lightweight 12,335, Adventure Touring 4,535.
Read those two facts together and the picture is precise. Touring did not grow in absolute terms; it shipped fewer units than in 2023. It grew as a share of a smaller company, and it grew inside the specific US segment Harley chose to measure and report. Both things are true, and only one of them is the headline. For how that looked against the rest of the industry, see our best selling motorcycles of 2024 roundup.
What it means if you are buying one used
A 2024 is the first model year of a redesigned motorcycle, which normally argues for waiting. The counterweight here is the price. $25,999 was the cheapest way into a 117 powered Street Glide, and the number went back up the following year, so the usual first year discount logic runs backward: the launch year is the cheap one.
If you are cross shopping a late M8 114 Special against a 2024, the differences are not cosmetic. Different engine, 55cc more displacement, 130 lb-ft against 118, 16 lb less to hold up at a stop light, an unladen seat an inch taller at 28.1 inches, and a 12.3 inch screen where there used to be gauges. Those are different motorcycles that share a silhouette.
The parts of the 2024 that are hardest to judge from a spec sheet are the ones that are new rather than bigger: Skyline OS, the four ride modes, and how the redesigned fairing behaves once it has a few winters on it. That is what owner reports on living with the Street Glide are for, and it is the check we would run before signing for an early build. For the four brand comparison, see Harley vs Indian vs Honda vs BMW, 2024.
2024 is the year Harley made the answer easy. It is also the only year the company came close to saying it out loud.
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.
