By Olaf Wolff 

AllABoutBikes.com Sr. Staff Writer

Abraham Maslow, the father of Modern Management Psychology, said “To a man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.” He was referring to human adaptability, but he just as well could have been talking about the Victory Hammer. There’s nothing subtitle about this muscle cruiser – it’s light on finesse and heavy on blunt force drama. It delivers a jolt of pure primal motorcycle testosterone that sneers at conventional frilliness and yells, “hey, adapt to this.”  If that teases your motorcycling pleasure zone, have I got a bike for you.

After picking up the Hammer I was looking at a 110 miles of caustically rude LA freeways before settling home, at last, along the coast of Ventura. Oh, and I only had a couple of miles of surface street to prepare. Normally, I’d require a tad more slow dancing before diving into the churning techno blast of Interstate 10, but the Hammer delivers a high priority thunder of confidence as though wrought by Thor himself. 

For the sake of science, though, and more earthly concerns, I’m going believe the instant surge of self-assurance comes from the massive 250mm Dunlop rear tire and its steadfast determination to hold a steady course. Or, perhaps it has everything to do with sweetest, most powerful engine Victory has ever concocted, in harmony with the ridiculously comforting absence of any rattling or shaking. Okay fine, I’m just going to come out and say this – throttling up hard, onto that first freeway onramp, and damn if I didn’t forget I was on an American made motorcycle. I was getting more answers from the Hammer than questions, and that is indeed a very comforting thing.

I was lucky to be one of the riders in the first ever comparison road tests, which included two Japanese cruisers, the first edition V-Rod, and an early model Hammer. Unofficially, that Hammer finished tied for third. As worlds collide, it’s my humble opinion, that this ’09 Hammer would surely take the top podium position in the muscle-cruiser class. In motorcycle years, Victory has made enormous improvement strides in a relatively short period of time.

The specifications comparison between the Hammer S and its nearest American made competitor are pretty much the same. The overall length, seat height and dry weight are so similar they’re not worth mentioning. One noteworthy exception though is ground clearance; the Hammer has an inch more. That extra inch translates into better corning. In unison with the inverted cartridge, telescopic front forks and the single, mono-tube gas rear shock, the Hammer handles twisty roads far better than expected from a bike designed to dominate the straight-aways. Even with the huge rear tire, the bike holds a lean, but it does require some very deliberate muscling from the rider. I’ll get back to that rear tire in a second.

The huge difference between the Hammer and any other muscle cruiser is the power plant. The 106 cubic inch (1731 cc), 4-stroke V-twin is air/oil cooled and produces 97 horsepower and a walloping 113 ft-lb of torque. It’s worth mentioning a second time, this is the most powerful engine ever produced by Victory – this thing pulls like a juiced-up, steroid-injected, steaming locomotive throughout the power band. Being the biggest, badass production bike in the neighborhood is a given. The engine styles with a single, overhead cam and 4-valves per cylinder, it has self-adjusting cam chains and hydraulic lifters. The best part is that this engine is bulletproof – it’s very strong and very dependable. The six-speed transmission handles all that explosiveness with ease. The only downside is finding neutral; that can be a little iffy at times.

I discovered one other dimension on that initial ride home after picking up the Hammer – that extended ride up Highway-1 I’d planed wasn’t going to happen. I’m a couple of inches over six-foot – just a tad too tall for the Hammer’s seat-to-handlebar configuration. After roughly 20 minutes of riding, I could neither hold a lean forward comfortably, nor relax, letting my back slump backwards. The lower muscles in my back where forced to control my seating position. In addition, this exasperated the fact that the aerodynamics of the gas tank were constantly pushing on the inside of my thighs the faster I went, forcing me to use even more effort to hold my legs together. If you’re closer to “average” height this shouldn’t be a concern – for me though – it was a major concern.

I’d like to see the gas tank hold more gas too, and/or the bike to get better mileage, it holds 4.5 gallons currently and averages 36 mpg, making for frequent gas stops. I don’t get why any motorcycle ever gets less than 50 mpg. 36 mpg isn’t even that good for a car at this point, but that’s for another story.

The Hammer behaves reasonably well at slow speeds. I say reasonably well because although the bike is civil at slow speeds, it’s not in its comfort zone there. The gearing is too wide for anything under 15 mph, so it chugs. Also, back to that monster rear tire, that’s a tire made for hammering, not dancing…delicate maneuvering on a 250 mm tire, well, it doesn’t exist, parking lots are not the place to relax on a Hammer.

The only other issue I have with the Hammer S is the paint – Broadway blue with a white strip? That isn’t showing the kind of conviction this motorcycle deserves. Man up Victory, and paint this bad-boy with the sort of ragging thunder it’s worthy of.

The Hammer S is primarily a single purpose machine. It’s very good at what it was designed to do – to kick ass and take names one stop light or motorcycle juke-joint at a time. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.