I rented a Harley for a week on a family holiday in Phoenix a couple of years ago.
Frankly, it was far smoother and quieter than I had expected it to be so it seemed as though H-D had quelled the vibration and noise issues. It was however, much slower than any other motorcycle I had ever ridden. It was NOT easy to get a away from a clown in a cage - and yet, in my experience, even a humble 400cc Honda commuter bike could easily blow off any car that had ever challenged me and my other bikes (presently a couple of 1970s Yamaha XS650s and a Honda ST1300) are in a totally different league in terms of power and acceleration - while none of them could be called "performance" bikes.
Aside from the on-road performance (which I could charitably characterize only as...stately), what truly surprised me was the extraordinarily poor ergonomics.
Now, I am definitely not a Harley guy, but the thing was cripplingly uncomfortable with a seat that was too low, pegs that were too high and too far forward and bars that required shoulder surgery to reach in a reasonable way. No normally proportioned human being could possibly ride that thing in comfort. Also, the danged gauges were far too small and far away from the rider's eyes to be clearly legible (and NO, I do not normally need glasses to ride my bikes). Finally, the switches were too small and not at all intuitively labelled, so I never seemed to know what would happen when I pushed a button.
Overall, it had the feel of something that had been designed by a committee - that had never actually met in-person.
That was very surprising for a product that can only be described as "mature" in terms of the product development cycle.
Pete