Harley-Davidson Agrees To $12M Fine Over ‘Super Tuners’

Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson will pay a $12 million civil penalty under an air pollution settlement announced Thursday with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Justice Department.

The EPA says Harley-Davidson made and sold as many as 340,000 after-market parts called “super tuners” — which boost power and performance, but emit more pollutants than the company disclosed.

Ken Condon, a writer for Motorcyclist Magazine, said super tuners are about the size of a pack of cigarettes and are supposed to be used for off-road racing only.

“The fact is that a lot of people, they do use these products to tune their motorcycle and ride them on the street,” he said.

The EPA said in a statement Thursday that it does not focus “on vehicles built or used exclusively for racing, but on companies that don’t play by the rules and make and sell products that disable pollution controls on motor-vehicles used on public roads.”

“These illegal defeat devices pump dangerous and illegal pollution into the air we breathe,” the statement reads. “Tampering with pollution controls for the vehicles on public roads is a violation that threatens public health. That’s why EPA’s enforcement emphasis is on illegal defeat devices used on the road.”

Paul Billings, a spokesman for the American Lung Association, said the pollution from these vehicles “can be significantly higher than the law requires,” which can lead to significant increases in pollution in communities where the vehicles are operated.

Harley-Davidson also promises to buy back and destroy the super tuners, which it must stop selling by Aug. 23. The firm says the settlement is not an admission of liability, just a good faith compromise on an area of law Harley views differently than the EPA and Justice Department. In addition to the $12 million fine, the company will also pay $3 million to mitigate air pollution, by participating in a project that will replace conventional wood stoves with cleaner-burning stoves in local communities, according to the settlement.