This Harley-Davidson model nameplate appeared for the 1980 model year and ran through 1986 as part of the company’s FX family of factory custom Big Twin motorcycles. It arrived during the period when Harley-Davidson was leaning into the chopper-inspired look from the showroom, offering a more dramatically styled alternative to the company’s more conventional cruisers. The machine is best remembered for its stretched, wide-front-end stance and its custom-show appearance, which helped define the era’s factory-built custom aesthetic.
The nameplate was associated with a distinct late-Shovelhead and early-Evolution-era chapter in Harley-Davidson history, and it became one of the better-known FX variants of the 1980s. Its appeal was largely visual and cultural: it translated the garage-built chopper look into a production motorcycle, making it especially popular with riders who wanted a bolder, custom image without starting from scratch. Within Harley-Davidson’s lineup, it sat alongside other FX-era performance and custom-oriented models, but this one was the most explicitly styled as a wide-front-end showpiece.
The model ended after the 1986 model year. Harley-Davidson later revived the Wide Glide idea on a different platform and under a different model code, but that later motorcycle was not the same nameplate and should not be conflated with this original FX designation.