I know Harley made some different bikes but, It looks like someone put Harley stickers on a crotch Rocket. I could be wrong. I have never seen a Harley that looked like this one. And you say this is vintage.It looks like a new bike to me.

thats a Buell i think, which is made by Harley, plus they do have crotch rockets for compitition racing

Go to their website and you'll see Harley's come in all shapes and sizes. Throughout the years they have produced many different kinds of racing bikes, all of which differ greatly from a Sportster or Fat Boy or the old flatheads and panheads. Evel Kneivel jumped with a customized '72 Harley Davidson XR-750, a highly regarded dirt track race bike.

Yep – Harley has made several attempts at road racing, most recently with the Harley VR1000 piloted by the legendary Chris Carr, Doug Chandler and others. They struggled with reliability and were generally not competitive although I recall one very wet race where they ran well – the power delivery of the Harley engine was well suited to that sort of conditions. Amazingly, the one thing the VR1000 had going for it was handling, contrary to Harley's normal reputation.

Both the bikes you have links to here are VR1000s. The one with the massive drum brake is, of course, an older machine. The other is from the mid 90s and is clearly street legal (lights, blinkers, mirrors) – AMA rules call for a minimum number of bikes to be produced before the model is eligible to race.

The great thing to come from the VR1000s is the V-Rod series of bikes, which uses some of the technology that Harley was experimenting with on the track like overhead cams and water cooling.