This Softail nameplate first appeared for the 2001 model year as the fuel-injected version of Harley-Davidson’s Fat Boy, joining the original carbureted variant rather than replacing it. In the early 2000s it sat within the company’s big-twin Softail family and carried the Fat Boy’s trademark low-slung stance, solid visual mass, and heavily stylized cruiser attitude, but with electronic fuel injection marking it out from the base model. It remained part of the lineup through the mid-2000s, with Harley-Davidson’s own 2007 Softail documentation showing the standard Fat Boy designation while the FLSTFI code no longer appeared, indicating the first run had ended by that point.
The nameplate returned in 2025 as the Fat Boy Gray Ghost, a limited Icons Collection tribute that explicitly revives the FLSTFI code. Harley-Davidson positioned the motorcycle as a modern celebration of the original 1990 Fat Boy’s look and legacy, using the revived badge for a special edition rather than a continuous regular-production Softail trim. Because the nameplate appeared in one period, disappeared, and later returned in a different historical context, it should be treated as a multi-period nameplate rather than a single uninterrupted production run.