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Harley doomed?

StefArmstg

StefArmstg

Well travelled
Location
Colorado
My first big bike was a '59 Duoglide. My last Harley was an Evo Sportster. But I confess, I haven't paid much attention to Harley since then.

If this is true, it's another case of corporate suicide.


In the wake of Trump's reelection, I heard on the news that Harley had dropped it's DEI programs. What? When did Harley go woke? Bud Lite on wheels?
 
TS; DW (too stupid; didn't watch). Looks and sounds like another piece of "AI slop," something created by giving a few prompts to a chatbot and throwing the result at YouTube (see the latest John Oliver show).

There may be a grain or two of truth in this, but having ridden Harleys since 1982 I can say it's 99% BS. Take the whole "Harley abandoned its working-class roots" thing. That's exactly backwards. It is true that by the early '90s Harleys (at least the big twins) were too expensive for a lot of factory workers to afford, but that's because the 1980s were the time when working class wages started falling (in real money) thanks to government policies that favored "service" and "tech" sectors. By Harley's heyday in the 1990s, most Harley buyers were doctors, lawyers, engineers, finance professionals, and other members of the dreaded "Rich Urban Biker" class, because they were the ones who could afford $10,000 for a stripped (no radio, no fairing, no chrome trim) Electra-Glide in 1990. The "working class" part of the Harley sub-culture has been RUB's cosplaying working-class (and more recently, military). For a good 30 (and maybe 40) years now, the biggest difference between a Renaissance Faire and a Harley rally has been that the Ren Faire folks admit they're playing dress-up.

If you want to know what led to Harley's current problems, I think you need to go back to a pair of fateful decisions made in 1983 (?) and 1985, both of which seemed eminently sensible at the time, and both of which produced a lot of short-term benefit before coming back to bite the company in the butt.

The first was the decision to cancel the liquid-cooled V-4 "Nova" series of bikes (which were fully developed, tested, and ready for mass production) and bring out the Evo mid-way through 1983. It is said that the bankers would only loan H-D enough money to bring one of these new platforms to market, and Milwaukee made the "safe" choice. Probably true, but this choice doomed Harley to forever be a "V-twin cruiser bike" company--the Evo was just the latest incremental improvement in the Knuckle-Pan-Shovel series that dated back to 1935. The Nova could have been a "breakout" bike, turning Harley into a full-line motorcycle company. The Shovel was a bit long in the tooth, but Beals & Co. had gotten it to near-Japanese levels of build quality and reliability (I know from experience--I put 55,000 miles on my 1983 FXRT in three years without problems); they could have nursed it for a few more years, even teasing some "last edition" bikes, while proclaiming the Nova to be "the future." This is exactly what BMW did with the aging Airheads and the radically modern "flying brick" K-bikes, and look how that worked: BMW is still known for its boxer twins, but it's also known for its parallel twins, singles, inline fours and even sixes--the company is not dependent on a single market segment that could age out as Harley's is doing.

The second was to go public, listing on the NYSE in 1985. What almost killed Harley in the AMF days was being subject to the whims of a parent company that knew little-to-nothing about the motorcycle industry. Harley's comeback was based on a management team that were motorcycle people, not money people. But by going public, they guaranteed that eventually company policy and direction would be subject to the whims of the Wall Street herd... which knows nothing about the motorcycle industry and just wants to jack up the share price and sell at a short-term profit. Every bad decision the company's made in the last thirty years has been applauded by the herd. Right now an investment company is trying to force out the current leadership, which was installed largely when other investment companies got mad at the results the previous leadership gave them. The people at the top are not actually the ones running the company; the investment companies and Wall Street touts are making the key decisions. And investment companies that demand continuous growth and ever-increasing share prices do not provide good leadership when the realities of demographics say the market is going to shrink. The motorcycle market in North America is still large and potentially profitable (especially for a company focused on that market, as opposed to a global company), but it is shrinking, and if management (that is, Wall Street) demands endless growth, it's not going to end well.

My $0.02 on the matter, anyway.
 
Harley has a lot of problems for a lot of reasons.
The old bikers want nothing new or innovative. The V-Rod (a Willie G baby) as an example, was completely shunned by the Harley buyer at the time of release. Problem is the old biker market is shrinking fast now.

Include in that they don't make an affordable motorcycle anymore. One of the main reasons RE is exploding on the global market. Great value for the money. Can HD say that? Especially now that some Brainiac decided to ditch the Sportster. That was by far, my favorite Harley.
The Street, though nice bikes, were a complete failure. They're "damned if they do, damned if they don't" now, and have painted themselves into a bad corner.

I've had a number of Harley's and have wrenched on a ton of them. I liked them all, for different reasons (I simply love motorcycles, regardless of brand).....but I can't see one in my future anymore. Too big, too heavy, and WAY to expensive. They had what I call the "Cadillac Attitude". It doesn't matter what lands on the showroom floor, people will buy it because it's as Cadillac. That wind that was filling HD's sails for a long time, has stopped blowing.
I'm an American. Of course I don't want to see Harley fail....but they've done this to themselves, and the last guy who ran it didn't help in the matter from everything I've read. Unfortunately, the only thing that lasts forever is herpes.
 
Having ridden a Street, nothing made me want a HD less than being on that bike.

And the above post discussing how government policies shifted toward other industries as a reason for factory wage decline (won't get into that here), do remember that without 'government policies' HD would have been dead a generation earlier. Reagan should have let them rot and repealed the Chicken Tax instead so that we could have some decent trucks for a change, but this isn't the forum for politics.

To me HD is a dinosaur that can happily go to its end, the last good Harley was built before I was born.
 
2LZ said:
Harley has a lot of problems for a lot of reasons.
The old bikers want nothing new or innovative. The V-Rod (a Willie G baby) as an example, was completely shunned by the Harley buyer at the time of release. Problem is the old biker market is shrinking fast now.
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Yes and no... every Harley rider I knew (including me) who took a ride on the Vrod hated the bike (horrible seating position, slow handling, and the disc wheels on the first year caught every cross-breeze and truck wake eddy), but loved the motor. More than a few of us were ready and willing to put down money right now, on the spot, for a touring bike with that motor. What caused Harley to insist that no, the only place that motor would be offered was the painful styling exercise, is totally beyond my understanding.

As for the old bikers... yeah, this has been a problem since I got my second Harley, an FXRT (rubber-mount Super Glide with streamlined fairing and bags originally intended for the Nova), in 1983. Hadn't owned the bike two weeks before some geezer muttered something about putting a Honda fairing on my Harley. Now, of course, there's an industry in making replicas of that bodywork, as the California cruiser crowd has decided they like it.

I also had the experience of going to a Harley shop to get standard Sportster parts for my tube-frame Buells and getting a load of crap about how that's "not a real Harley." Yeah, I guess not, 'cause it'll leave your $20K CVO in its dust.

Everything the least bit outside-the-box (FXRT, XR1000, a whole lot of "sport" models, Buell, the stillborn "Street" 500/750, and now the Pan Am) gets the stink-eye and "that's not a real Harley" muttering from the old geezers. Luckily these guys are dying off, so the Pan Am might yet stand a chance (the dealer in Boise sure had a lot of them, and I saw a surprising number while we were tooling around the Northwest for the last few weeks).
2LZ said:
Include in that they don't make an affordable motorcycle anymore. One of the main reasons RE is exploding on the global market. Great value for the money. Can HD say that? Especially now that some Brainiac decided to ditch the Sportster. That was by far, my favorite Harley.
The Street, though nice bikes, were a complete failure. They're "damned if they do, damned if they don't" now, and have painted themselves into a bad corner.
Click to expand...
The Street bikes were dead on arrival because Harley's upper management foolishly announced them almost a year before they showed up in dealerships. That gave the old farts plenty of time to make it clear the bikes would never, never, never be considered "real Harleys" before anybody ever actually saw one in person. They then doubled-down on the stupidity by product-placing a couple on a TV show: "Blue Bloods," whose median viewers were something around 70 years old. Didn't help that the Street bikes were pretty forgettable, though they did a better job of styling the radiator than just about any bike I've seen.

One good thing about the Street models, though: the front brake caliper from the first couple years fits a Himalayan 411 and provides a noticeable improvement in stopping power.
2LZ said:
I've had a number of Harley's and have wrenched on a ton of them. I liked them all, for different reasons (I simply love motorcycles, regardless of brand).....but I can't see one in my future anymore. Too big, too heavy, and WAY to expensive. They had what I call the "Cadillac Attitude". It doesn't matter what lands on the showroom floor, people will buy it because it's as Cadillac. That wind that was filling HD's sails for a long time, has stopped blowing.
I'm an American. Of course I don't want to see Harley fail....but they've done this to themselves, and the last guy who ran it didn't help in the matter from everything I've read. Unfortunately, the only thing that lasts forever is herpes.
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My 21-year-old Road King, just back from the Northwest (didn't qualify as the "Northwet" because we had exactly one day of rain in a 24-day trip) with 118K on the odometer, is probably my last Harley. We did an almost 5800-mile trip, but I'm having trouble two-upping on this 800 pound bike. It's fine once we're moving, but starts and (especially) stops are inelegant, and I can see that my days of two-up cross-country trips on this thing are numbered--and I am NOT going to get one of their $40K Rascal-Glides (for one thing, I can't afford it). When we move to trailering a mid-size bike to someplace like Maine or Colorado and taking day trips, the bike will not be a Harley. Their only "middle-weight" bike, the Nightster, combines the terrible ergonomics of the Vrod with styling that makes me long for the Street 750.

I think the best thing that could happen to the Motor Company is to be taken private, either by a group of motorcycle-enthusiast executives (as in 1981), or by a "white knight" billionaire who sees the potential to make money in a shrinking market by making bikes specifically for North American riders. I know people who'd love to buy "American" but don't want anything in Harley's current lineup.
 
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Harley doesn't sell motorcycles. Harley sells sex appeal. Thier advertising features tough and rugged looking men and hard as nails women. They are selling an image not a product. HD has sold themselves on the idea of the outlaw and rebel for so long that they can't change and produce sensible bikes that don't fit that ethos.
Honda sells reliability, Suzuki/Kawasaki/Yamaha sell adrenaline. BMW/KTM/Ural sell rugged toughness. Indian sells Made in USA and 'we're better than the alternative'.

Royal Enfield sells nostalgia and fun.

The problem is, young folks aren't buying the sex appeal of HD anymore and are leaning towards go-fast-wheelie-death machines (TM) sold by almost everyone else. When a Harley meetup struggles to attract anyone under 45 you know there is a problem. That and no one has 18K for a brand new motorcycle right now and HD isn't selling 9-11K bikes like they used to. I might have gone for a sportster if they still made them instead of my Super Meteor, but that ship sailed for me and for many men my age. If I'm going to get a touring machine it will be an Indian.
 
smilespergallon said:
Having ridden a Street, nothing made me want a HD less than being on that bike.

And the above post discussing how government policies shifted toward other industries as a reason for factory wage decline (won't get into that here), do remember that without 'government policies' HD would have been dead a generation earlier. Reagan should have let them rot and repealed the Chicken Tax instead so that we could have some decent trucks for a change, but this isn't the forum for politics.

To me HD is a dinosaur that can happily go to its end, the last good Harley was built before I was born.
Click to expand...
The Reagan tariff story has become the stuff of myth--actually two myths, depending on your politics and attitude toward Harley-Davidson. "Reagan saved the company, hooray," or "Reagan interfered with the free market to prop up a company that should have been allowed to die," pick your favorite poison. Trouble is, neither is true.

Sometime in the 1990s, one of the big magazines (I want to say Cycle World, but I may be wrong) did a deep dive into the history, and came up with a much more complex story. First, the tariffs didn't "save" Harley, because Harley was never in any great danger from Japanese competition. Very few Japanese bikes competed directly with any Harley models, and Japan hadn't yet cracked the problem of making a proper "Harley clone" bike (Yamaha missed a fantastic opportunity with the early Virago, whose triangulated monoshock rear could have delivered a faux-hardtail look a couple years before Harley's Softail came out). Second, the Japanese price cuts and eventual "dumping" had little or nothing to do with attacking Harley; it was Honda and Yamaha getting locked into a price war that neither could figure out how to exit. Seems that when Honda's moto line got a bit stale in the early '80s (the result of Honda putting its R&D into the car business), Yamaha saw an opportunity to become the Number One motorcycle manufacturer and brought out a slew of new, interesting, and reasonably-priced models. Honda responded with price cuts, Yamaha answered in kind, and we were off to the races... just in time for a recession in the US to dry up demand. Neither Japanese company could cut production in response to falling demand, because that would involve layoffs that were just not acceptable in the Japanese culture of the day (as one Japanese executive said in a quote I still recall, "the Japanese people must work"). So the factories kept running, bikes piled up in the US warehouses, and US distributors kept cutting prices in an attempt to sell them... eventually reaching the point where they were legally "dumping" (selling below cost). Meanwhile, Harley was doing just fine, as they were making a premium-priced bike that (after the buyback and the release of the Evo motor) was popular with the professionals who were largely unaffected by the recession. In the end, the tariffs gave the Japanese companies a face-saving way to get out of the price war ("we don't want to lay you off; it's Reagan's doing") and a reason to develop a whole bunch of new models (notice that most of the "tariff-buster" 699cc bikes were not just sleeved-down existing bikes; the manufacturers took the opportunity to develop new and exciting models).

So, a much more complicated story. I have come to believe that Harley would have been better off not requesting the tariffs, as they would not today have the "wouldn't be here if Reagan hadn't bailed them out" albatross around their neck. On the other hand, it seems that by breaking a destructive price war, the tariffs helped the Japanese motorcycle industry, so maybe they were a good thing, even if not the way they were intended to be.


BTW, the hollowing-out of US manufacturing is hardly political, as both parties and pretty much the entire financial and economics establishment was firmly convinced the future lay in technology, services (especially financial services), and globalized free trade. Turns out everybody guessed wrong. Happens sometimes.
 
Scott Free said:
TS; DW (too stupid; didn't watch). Looks and sounds like another piece of "AI slop," something created by giving a few prompts to a chatbot and throwing the result at YouTube (see the latest John Oliver show).
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I tend to agree with @Scott Free, it's not one-woman's fault that she put HD on a quest to kill off the company. In any corporation big or small the over-arching "theme" of the company is signed off by the CEO. They speak about their "vision" at every trade show, at every launch party. They tell a "story", not just of the company's past, but they want to sell the future-sexxay story as a slipline into the company's past.

Harley-Davidson has failed because Jochen Zeitz AND the team that put together Harley's corporate vision have all failed. That's the entire sales and marketing division. And remember that the great engineers who work three-levels-down (depending on the Org chart structure)... they are the ones who know motorcycling best, they are riders themselves, and they're semi-to-fully aware of what creations get riders excited about bikes.

Harley has killed off so much stuff. There's not just NO ENTRY in the line, there's not even a midrange anymore in their lineup.

Only NOW with the company in extreme crisis like it is do they discover that people still want a 4-digit (USD) priced motorcycle? That not everyone wants a touring road sofa to make one trip a year they would use a Road King for?

ADV FAILURE

Why is it that since the introduction of the Honda Africa-Twin (this bike LAUNCHED in 1988!) that Harley Davidson never one serious look at building a whole ADV lineup? The Africa Twin created the entire adventure bike market. This is where more older men with money go to shop for bikes! The Pan America launched in 2021.

So, even with the demographic that Harley-Davidson likes to have open their wallet... which is moneyed men over 40, they couldn't even find away to get their non-cruiser bikes on the radar screens of younger guys to even sell them on the idea of a travel bike that does off-roading.

And it's not like Harley Davidson had some product that would kill the Africa Twin and BMW GS 1200... these are 5-digit bikes that should have attracted a lot more effort and marketing projects at Harley to get firmly embedded into the spaces where ADV people play. ADV riders tend to be dirt bikers when they were young, then took a break, then got back in to riding but are too scared of riding on the street. An ADV IS ALSO A ROAD SOFA! It's got a massive suspension and cleated tires, and it has the power to do freeway.

Have you ever sat on the newest Africa Twin? IT IS LIKE SITTING ON A CLOUD. It is a luxury riding experience for your butt. You don't need the batwing windshield or the stereo, or even a Starship Enterprise console embedded (and stealing space) in your gas tank.


Royal Enfield

What's amazing about this is that Royal Enfield simply went into the US/EU/CAN markets not by trying to compete against Harley, but to compete against Triumph... the hipster motorcycle maker.

By updating all of its classics.

By stealing a fuel design engineer from Suzuki, bringing us the high-end Bosch fuel injector on the RE and bringing the cost way the hell down.

And Royal Enfield sees that adventure bikes are a thing and they're super f-cking fun and they put out the Himalayan, then keep making it better.

Then put out the SCRAM, which essentially is another take on making a dual.

Then puts out the Bear, which is a flat-out city commuting dual.


And by putting out these newer models that are designed to get beaten up with harder riding, their engineers rework their traditional lines even more.


ALL ON A 4 DIGIT PRICE TAG.


Is it no wonder that Royal Enfield is now the biggest seller in the world? They're not even competing against Triumph anymore. They're going after HONDA.




Where's Harley-Davidson? They're wasting shareholders money and blowing smoke up people's exhaust systems.
 
And as for the "woke" scandal at Harley-Davidson:

That was just icing on the cake. The dealers were screaming at corporate a year and a half before those Robby Starbuck tweets about inventory in the dealership not moving. Dialing up the wokeness to where your new motorcycle comes with its own pronouns wasn't going to get one more unit to sell; anymore than it scared off new riders.

HD has been telling new riders to go away for the past 11 years.

I get on my Bear 650 and I get asked about the bike ALL THE TIME. I keep my dealer's business cards with me just so that I can get the conversation to wrap up quicker.
 
Harley has been going out of business and day now for the last 50 years.

More/less profits for this quarter compared to any other quarter, more/less profits this year compared to any other year is just that. And it gives "journalists" something to write about.

When H-D posts an annual report of loss for the year ill start taking it seriously.
 
If Royal Enfield makes the right marketing package for the Guerilla 450 and is very, very careful about how they launch the bike in the USA and adjust next year's model for the feedback (seems like that's why RE has yet to launch it in the USA), the company has a serious chance at becoming a mainstay brand for new riders.

If you think about new female riders in particular, the "default chick bike" for new women in the USA has been stuck in these choices for the longest time:
- Ninja 400
- MT-03
- Rebel 300/500
- a scooter


The seating is already perfect for short riders, the handling is already quite good, the power is excellent (freeway capable), with doing the last-mile changes to the bike for new/inexperienced riders (the tires have to be right FROM FACTORY, you don't want to put throwaways on it, the TFT needs to be bug-free, the fuel map has to be sane, the fuel injector needs to behave right for the crazy different fuel blends the USA has, etc)... Royal Enfield would cross the lips of most motorcycle riding instructors when talking about models in front of their fresh permits.

The list of bikes that get recommended to fresh permits is pretty short and hasn't changed for such a long time, if RE enters that list... and the Guerilla looks like it could be that bike... RE is the next Honda.

1751323760456.png
 
Death by a thousand cuts? Triumph is heading that way I think. The guys at Baxter told me they sold 39 new Triumphs last year, They sold over 200 new Royal Enfields .
They've been a Triumph dealer forever. I'm not worried about Harley. Not when I have Royal Enfields to ride. If they go under, somebody will buy them, reorganize, and keep selling bikes. I've had 3 Harleys. Good bikes. I sold my last one because it was too heavy. And they are too expensive. Triumph is too expensive too now. (I've had two).That's why i'm riding REs now. Maybe Polaris will buy Harley.
 
iowa al said:
Death by a thousand cuts? Triumph is heading that way I think. The guys at Baxter told me they sold 39 new Triumphs last year, They sold over 200 new Royal Enfields .
They've been a Triumph dealer forever. I'm not worried about Harley. Not when I have Royal Enfields to ride. If they go under, somebody will buy them, reorganize, and keep selling bikes. I've had 3 Harleys. Good bikes. I sold my last one because it was too heavy. And they are too expensive. Triumph is too expensive too now. (I've had two).That's why i'm riding REs now. Maybe Polaris will buy Harley.
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No reason for Polaris to buy them but I have to agree. Triumph had some fantastic bikes. Now they’re just too expensive and no longer made in the UK. The other really unique thing about Royal Enfield are there colors. Indian scout comes in black for the base trim. That’s it. For 13k I want some paint choices dammit.
 
BikerBear650 said:
If Royal Enfield makes the right marketing package for the Guerilla 450 and is very, very careful about how they launch the bike in the USA and adjust next year's model for the feedback (seems like that's why RE has yet to launch it in the USA), the company has a serious chance at becoming a mainstay brand for new riders.

If you think about new female riders in particular, the "default chick bike" for new women in the USA has been stuck in these choices for the longest time:
- Ninja 400
- MT-03
- Rebel 300/500
- a scooter


The seating is already perfect for short riders, the handling is already quite good, the power is excellent (freeway capable), with doing the last-mile changes to the bike for new/inexperienced riders (the tires have to be right FROM FACTORY, you don't want to put throwaways on it, the TFT needs to be bug-free, the fuel map has to be sane, the fuel injector needs to behave right for the crazy different fuel blends the USA has, etc)... Royal Enfield would cross the lips of most motorcycle riding instructors when talking about models in front of their fresh permits.

The list of bikes that get recommended to fresh permits is pretty short and hasn't changed for such a long time, if RE enters that list... and the Guerilla looks like it could be that bike... RE is the next Honda.

View attachment 29828
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Oh please no. The Moto world has enough two wheeled soulless appliances as it is now. That comment aside .....


The Indian Domestic Market being Royal Enfields bread & butter and home turf, it makes sense for them to release new models for their first year there.
A. To satisfy their biggest most loyal customer pool.
B. To keep the first year models within arms reach for easy rectification purposes should an unknown defect or flaw rear it's ugly head.

Just my opinion fwiw.
 
Like @Eatmore Mudd was saying, folks in the media been ringing the death knell for Harley for decades, meanwhile they keep selling lots of very expensive bikes and a lifestyle to folks who buy their products. They aren't going anywhere, I see hundreds of Harleys a week. Lots of folks are jumping on that 117 because it basically makes 100+lb/ft everywhere and it's geared bout dang perfect. Harely aint going anywhere, they'll always make a bike people will buy, because they have decades of base. If you've never let the clutch out on a Harley and got on the throttle, you just don't know.

BikerBear650 said:
ADV FAILURE
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Yo, have you never heard of the H-D Pan America? A desert-living friend of my brother has one, he's 6'6" 300lbs and loves it to death. The engine is phenomenal!

I'm not even a friggin fan of H-D, but some of their new stuff is pretty good. Rather have a Polaris-built bike myself, but I see plenty of really nice H-D here in the cities. Incidentally, Polaris buying Harley-Davidson would never happen simply because US antitrust law would never let it happen. Harley could never buy Indian in the past! Chevy can never buy Ford, Intel can't buy AMD etc, etc

The cost of living having gone up so much in the US since '19-'20, it's no wonder inexpensive bikes from China and India are so popular. With RE you get inexpensive manufacturing with decades of experience building tough motorcycles. Rather do that than some Dongchop scooter from Alibaba or the drop-shipped like 😁[/url]
 
buckeye-chuck said:
Harley doesn't sell motorcycles. Harley sells sex appeal. Thier advertising features tough and rugged looking men and hard as nails women. They are selling an image not a product. HD has sold themselves on the idea of the outlaw and rebel for so long that they can't change and produce sensible bikes that don't fit that ethos.
Honda sells reliability, Suzuki/Kawasaki/Yamaha sell adrenaline. BMW/KTM/Ural sell rugged toughness. Indian sells Made in USA and 'we're better than the alternative'.

Royal Enfield sells nostalgia and fun.

The problem is, young folks aren't buying the sex appeal of HD anymore and are leaning towards go-fast-wheelie-death machines (TM) sold by almost everyone else. When a Harley meetup struggles to attract anyone under 45 you know there is a problem. That and no one has 18K for a brand new motorcycle right now and HD isn't selling 9-11K bikes like they used to. I might have gone for a sportster if they still made them instead of my Super Meteor, but that ship sailed for me and for many men my age. If I'm going to get a touring machine it will be an Indian.
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I couldn't agree more!
Harley has just opened a massive new showroom just around the corner from my house, here in Buenos Aires and it must have cost a fortune. It's surprising considering the state of the Argentine economy, but then I do live in one of the wealthiest areas of the country and where there's muck there's brass, as they say in Yorkshire.
Anyway, I always consider it a waste of time to shamble into a showroom where I don't stand a hope in hell of ever buying overpriced motorcycles, but out of sheer curiosity, I did pop in the other day.
Not only was I ignored with no one approaching me ( I was dressed for riding and parked the Himalayan at the splendid front entrance) but I didn't feel welcome in the least.
Here, Harleys are twice the price of US/UK prices and frankly they need to compete.
They even have a small hospitality cafeteria at which I may have enjoyed a coffee if they could have been bothered to approach me. Neither did they say goodbye when I left.
On the other hand, when I walk into RE, two blocks away, I'm welcomed with open arms.
And another thing - Harley riders give the impression that they are above the rest of us and never wave back. Not to mention the stupid paraphernalia that they wear, even over the age of retirement or mid-life crises with those silver chains and Nazi helmets and ear splitting pipes.
Bloody hell!
 
Splinter said:
Not only was I ignored with no one approaching me ( I was dressed for riding and parked the Himalayan at the splendid front entrance) but I didn't feel welcome in the least.
Here, Harleys are twice the price of US/UK prices and frankly they need to compete.
They even have a small hospitality cafeteria at which I may have enjoyed a coffee if they could have been bothered to approach me. Neither did they say goodbye when I left.
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I have found this very dependent on the dealership. Some they try to sell me for sure and others absolutely ignore me. (I've been to a fair few with my riding friends who all have HD). The fact that you were riding a Himilayan may have had something to do with it as they figure you were just looking since it is VERY different than what Harley makes. If you were riding a Super Meteor or Shotgun you may have found a different response, and they might have figured you were looking to upgrade. The price definitely is a turn off though.
 
buckeye-chuck said:
I have found this very dependent on the dealership. Some they try to sell me for sure and others absolutely ignore me. (I've been to a fair few with my riding friends who all have HD). The fact that you were riding a Himilayan may have had something to do with it as they figure you were just looking since it is VERY different than what Harley makes. If you were riding a Super Meteor or Shotgun you may have found a different response, and they might have figured you were looking to upgrade. The price definitely is a turn off though.
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You make a fair point, but as a trained salesman myself, the argument has holes in it.
Many years ago, running my own business in the UK, I drove past a Jaguar dealer, spotted a beautiful Jaguar XJS Celebration (one of the very last models) on the forecourt and had to stop (as you do).
I was dressed in ripped jeans, tee shirt and trainers, strolled in and was largely ignored as a tyre kicker. However, a well dressed salesman approached me and asked if I would like a test drive, after which it was a no brainer. He had clearly been to the same sales training course as me, where I was taught that looks can be deceptive.
I bought the Jag and later two more from the same bloke.
Harley, it seems, doesn't work that way, so it's their loss.
 
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