Alphabet Soup: Decoding Harley-Davidson Letter Codes & Model Designations

Ask a Harley-Davidson^® motorcycle owner which model they are riding, and they may answer “a Street Glide^®” or “a Road Glide^® ,” or the name for another model. But beneath that name is a second alpha-numeric code that has been assigned to just about every Harley-Davidson motorcycle throughout the company’s 121-year history. Today, few owners would say they are riding an FLHXS or an RA1250, but for many years the Harley-Davidson model code was often the only designation assigned to specific Harley-Davidson bikes, and knowing the logic behind that code was a point of pride for serious Harley fans.

Logic, however, often has not always applied to the code name assigned to new models. Which is why, even for experts, the “alphabet soup” of Harley-Davidson model codes can be confusing. From year to year, or decade to decade, the prefix, or first letters, in a model designation gave a pretty clear indicator of which platform or family to which the model belonged. For many years Harley-Davidson model name prefix derived from the engine family. In 1936 when the 61-cubic inch overhead valve V-Twin engine debuted, it received the designator “E”, and the base model with this engine was simply called the Model E. The letters following the prefix that designate the specific model sometimes made sense but could also seem to be totally random. The Model ES was the same bike with sidecar gearing, and the Model EL had the more-powerful, high-compression version of the E-series engine. 

What we might today consider model names in the past often described a feature. So for example, Hydra Glide described the hydraulic front suspension introduced in 1949 across a line that included 10 models and two engine displacements – E for 61 cubic inches and F for 74 cubic inches. 

Most letters in the alphabet have been used multiple times to designate certain models or their derivatives. To complicate things further, the meanings or designations of individual letters have changed over the years or meant different things in the same year on multiple models. For example, in 2005, the R suffix may be for a Roadster^™ (XL883R) Road King^® (FLHR) or Racing (VRSC). Or the C suffix may denote a Custom (FXDC) or Classic (FLHTC).

Here’s a list of 2024 models with the alpha-numeric code and the model name: