Is this the begining of the end or will the US gov pull them back from the verge of extinction?
News is that Both BUELL and Harley Davidson have agreed to cease production of bikes from October through to January.. Claiming a world wide slump in the demand for motorbikes….?
Why then are the major 4 and Triumph as well as Ducati announcing new models and expansion further into the US market…
Will the US gov intervene and bail HD /BUELL out of the recession; or will they fold?
http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/News/newsresults/General-news/2009/September/sep1109-Buell-shuts-down-production-lines-as-sales-drop/?WT.dcsvid=SilverpopMailing&WT.mc_id=MCN%20Newsletter%2015sep09%20(1)
I’m surprised nobody’s had an answer for this in an hour!
You might say Harley is a victim of its own success. It’s the ultimate niche market. People who ride Harleys don’t want a -motorcycle-, they want a -Harley-. I mean, a Honda rider might get a Suzuki or a Yamaha next time, but a Harley rider wouldn’t consider anything else.
Harley has basically made the same motorcycle for 60-70 years now. Bigger, more refined, etc., but it has to look the same. It’s like one of those car companies that make replicas of 1930s cars, ‘replicars’. Harley is its own ‘repli-bike’.
Years ago Harley’s management realized that their days of making enormous air-cooled V-twin cruisers were numbered. But they were trapped. They couldn’t come out with a water-cooled inline four with shaft drive–who would buy it? Traditional Harley owners wouldn’t want it, and those who ride Japanese bikes wouldn’t want essentially an American copy of a Japanese bike at double the cost.
I think the V-Rod was their first attempt to break out of the mold. It was a real departure for HD, very daring, but you notice they still had to make it -look- like a traditional Harley. From what I hear, market acceptance is less than expected.
So yes, they’re in trouble. In a recession you would expect the most expensive bikes to fall the most in sales, but beyond that I think there are just too many ‘metric’ alternatives to Harley these days, plus Harley is trapped by the market they so carefully created and fed all these years, the brand name they worked so hard to build. Kind of a shame, in a way.
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