Harley-Davidson introduced this VRSC variant for the 2006 model year as the VRSCD Night Rod, expanding the Revolution-powered V-Rod family with a darker, more performance-focused take on the original power cruiser. It arrived as part of Harley-Davidson’s liquid-cooled VRSC line and was positioned as a more aggressive street bike than the standard V-Rod, with a lower-slung stance, blacked-out visual treatment, and drag-inspired styling that helped separate it from the chrome-heavy Harley cruiser formula.
The Night Rod nameplate remained part of the lineup through the 2008 model year. Harley-Davidson’s 2008 VRSC documentation still listed the VRSCD Night Rod and its ABS-equipped variant, while later model-year VRSC documents shifted the lineup toward the Night Rod Special and V-Rod Muscle, indicating that the base Night Rod had been phased out by 2009. That makes the 2006–2008 span the continuous production run for this exact nameplate.
In the Harley-Davidson line, the model is historically important because it represented the brand’s early push into modern performance cruisers with a liquid-cooled, high-revving V-twin architecture rather than the company’s traditional air-cooled formula. Enthusiasts often remember it as the cleaner, less embellished sibling to the Night Rod Special: still aggressive and unmistakably V-Rod in character, but with a simpler factory look and a strong emphasis on the original Night Rod identity before the family evolved into more specialized variants.