the engine was a Porsche design, one of the few engineering decisions I've heard HD make in the past half-century that made any sense (though it's funny they asked for help with liquid cooling from one of the last car companies to adopt it). HD brass and Erik Buell were in on it, as it was supposed to be a motor for Buells with perhaps a future HD application. After HD got done throwing their specs and requirements at it, it was too heavy for Erik to want anything to do with (general consensus being HD just started the project to shut Erik up about having his own engine), so they slapped it in a cruiser frame and the Vrod was born. read that in an article about Buell. Rode a Night Rod myself, and besides being absolutely stunning (especially after they hid that headlight with a flyscreen), I was underwhelmed. Beast of a motor in a lowered chassis with less cornering clearance than a Softail Deluxe with floorboards (I only scraped once on a 90 degree into a parking lot on that).
