'Coming off trail / dirt bikes when I was a kid, I decided I wanted a street bike when I was 19-20, (working 2-3 jobs) 'rode all the big bikes of the time (BMW R900 (what an ill handling pos!) Honda 750s, Triumph twins & triples, Kaw triples, Z-1s, KZ 1000s, the poster of the soon to be released XLCR Café Sportster really got my interest up for HD, man what a badass looking bike! So I started checking out Shovels (mostly chopped to some degree), Sportsters and settled on a '76 Sporty in July of '76 (a Navy guy wrecked it, cosmetic damage only, with about 350 miles on it) because it handled extremely well for a liter bike, sounded great when I put the drag pipes / jetted the Zenith, and had plenty of go, would outrun most all the cages of the day to the ton, and would powershift 2nd every time

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Remember, Harley (AMF) couldn't give HDs away in the face of the Japanese onslaught of technology and "You meet the nicest people on a Honda"? Later HD petitioned the Fed for an import tariff, remember the 700s?
After taking any girl, for a spin on the Sporty, I instantly got "lucky"

Out of the hundreds of folks in my local (predominantly HD) riding community, I am the only one that is active on any HD forums, so I feel that we are just a very small cross section of the demographic.
I see tons of younger riders on HDs, a lot of them Military / former Military, mostly on "murdered out" SGs
I guess that what I was really saying was that Harley (then AMF) attracted a younger rider (me) back in the 70s...