For anyone on this thread who doesn’t ride, let me give you an analogy of the Harley ownership experience and why they’re screwed…
Imagine you’re buying a new car. You wan’t s sporty 2 door sedan. And you can buy one from any one of the car manufacturers you’re familiar with. Or, you can buy one from… let’s call them Nostalgia Inc. Their cars are pretty high-tech under the skin. In fact, they’ve led the market in sophisticated programable fuel injection systems, digital control area networks, and some other interesting engineering. And they look like a cool 60’s muscle car. But unfortunately, they also drive like a 60’s muscle car. Braking distance are scary long, handling is frighteningly bad by modern standards, they’re surprisingly slow and heavy, and they shake and rattle out of the showroom like something’s that’s already had a couple hundred thousand hard miles put on the odometer. All this, and they cost twice as much as what you’d pay at the Honda or Mini dealership for something similar.
And there’s a certain “antisocial” type of driver associated with their cars. In fact, all their marketing has centered around building that stereotype for 50 years. So if you drive a Nostalgia Inc. car, you’re ‘in the club’. Do you want to be in that club? If you don’t want to be in that club, why would you spend the money for something that’s demonstrably less functional and arguably less fun than the Toyota you can buy for half the price?
All this is to say, new riders won’t buy new Harley’s. Old riders who aren’t ‘in the club’ won’t buy new Harley’s. And the old riders who are ‘in the club’ are dying off. Harley Davidson is whistling past the graveyard while the smart money quietly cleans out the cash box. Harley isn’t going to go out of business, but they won’t be An American Company that Makes Motorcycles™ when the dust settles in a few years.
Personally it’s more about price than just going faster. When you say compare similar Honda and Harley bikes, the Harley will be atleast 50% more. And me along with most I know my age (mid 20s) don’t feel like spending an extra leg just to have a “special” logo on something. Even their apparel is way over priced.
That makes sense, especially considering that Rotax is also a manufacturer of very reliable aviation engines, like Rotax 914 - Wikipedia
And another aspect is serviceability - I don’t have any experience with Honda, but Kawasaki service manuals are amazingly straightforward, well illustrated and easy to follow.
I used to have a Vespa GT 200. It was a really fun. I never wanted a Harley but at one time I did think it would be cool to buy a Ural motorcycle with a sidecar. But after i got hurt on my Vespa I decided it wasn’t worth it.
Yup. I love my 300cc scooter, and am dismayed that the 2018 version seems to be totally unavailable in N. America. It’s great on gas, goes more than fast enough for any road, has lots of storage space… Harleys mostly have a high price tag and a dubious “rebel” image.
It’s a really good video, and I’d completely forgotten about the Reagan tariffs. Kudos to the people who put it together. It expresses exactly why I went with Yamaha instead of Harley when I was looking for a cruiser. My lightweight V-Star was exactly what I needed at the time without all the trash of the Harley image.
Tom of Finland (the source of the gay biker iconography and general Shakespeare of gay visuals) was already doing it in the fifties. It’s not so much that the gay version is ironic, as that the bikers who adopted it had a conspicuous lack of irony.
(Of course I’m oversimplifying for the sake of bitchiness)
In 1998 I bought a 1984 Vespa P200. My roommate bought a brand new HD Sportster. This was in Boston, so we would occasionally take trips together to Walden pond and etc. My ride was way more fun and attracted way cooler people including a beautiful and creative woman who eventually became my wife. Sadly, the Vespa was so attractive it was stolen a few years later. I was devastated. I still keep the key hoping it will somehow come back into my life.
