The Yam is just to ugly to compete in this group. Yeah, yeah, better performance, less money, blah blah blah. IMO, people who are considering a $20,000 Harley are not going to even consider buying the Raider. The Victory might get a look, but I don't think performance is the motivating factor in this purchasing decision. It's styling and cool factor, and the Yam lost big in both of those categories. If you compare the Raider to H-D and Victory products with similar prices (which is more realistic anyway, since people generally shop based on how much they can afford to spend), you might end up comparing the Raider to the standard Vegas and the Harley Superglide (I would have said Softail Standard but it has been discontinued). I don't think that would have changed the results of this shootout (since the Raider won on performance), but it would have eliminated price as the primary factor.
Let's talk about looks. Why is the Raider ugly? Let me count the reasons why. First, looking at the front, why did they use a headlight with ugly mounting brackets on the sides of it? Look at any custom cruiser and they will have a headlight with less obvious mounts. Then there's the big gap between the fuel tank and the steering head. Looks like some amateur hack and reweld job was done on the frame. The fuel tank doesn't look like it was custom designed for this bike. For the next eyesore, take a look at the rear fender strut. What's up with the weird angles? I read the part about them going for the "gothic" look, but this thing is just ugly. The seat angles are nearly as bad. And the exhaust, although it does provide the angles that Yam was looking for, just doesn't flow well. That's the problem with this bike. The photo MO posted of the bike looking down on it from behind doesn't look too bad, but the flow of the bike, looking at the side view, it just looks broken. JMHO.