As it’s turned out, hah hah, Big Dog have big joke on simple motojournalist. They let that deception dwell in my trusting mind while the Bull Dog was, in fact, being quietly retired; superseded by this, the new 2009 Wolf.
Longtime Dog fanciers will recognize the Wolf name since it was once the lean, aggressive flagship model of the line before being retired in 2002—a victim of the company’s nascent rear rubber expansion campaign. It’s fitting, then, that this stunning new machine should sport the Wolf moniker; fitting not only because it’s long, lean, and aggressive, but because it rides on the skinniest rubber the company’s employed in years—a 220mm.
Which is not to say that this is a throwback, since it’s a 220/50-20 tire, putting it out on the cutting edge of custom couture. Besides that obvious styling coup—and it is a knockout—the fact of a relatively svelte rear end enables the Wolf to reasonably mount a set of hard panniers, and put Big Dog in the vibrant custom bagger market. Fiberglass bags and associated hardware are already in the works to take that plunge.
The bike’s power is provided by a proprietary 121-inch version of the X-Wedge—developed over the last couple of years in close cooperation with the S&S engineers. An S&S EFI system and the elegant Baker/Big Dog Balanced Drive primary setup complete the package, and like all Big Dogs, the transmission is Baker’s DD6 RSD box.
