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Reading a half decent breakdown of how Harley Davidson became what they are today and why.
Something occured to me after reading this:
I wanted a Harley a few years ago and the folks at the local dealership made it more difficult than it needed to be, so I bought an Indian. Never regretted that move.I kinda noticed that this guy was on about watching Sons of Anarchy.
The problem with Harley is they became a corporation that thinks like a corporation. Historically they sold a bike that appealed to guys who marched to their own beat. At some point in the 90s yuppies started taking interest and kinda gentrified the market. Harley did what they thought made sense...they chased the money. Problem is, riding has always been a lifestyle for actual bikers, and it was a passing fad for IT software engineers. When the yuppies moved on to electric cars Harley was left trying to recapture their core market. Bad news is those guys weren't interest in girl-power or being gay.
The market for cruisers is straight men who refuse to accept the societal norms that are propagated by the entertainment industry. It's not chicks....it's not soy boys...it's not woke fundamentalists....it's men who want to hang out with like-minded men and ride bikes they bought from folks who act the same way. When I buy a bike I'm not interested in talking with some girl sales associate who has never ridden and has never owned a bike. I want to work with a guy who has 100k miles and some stories to tell under his belt.
Realistically, at the prices being charged, I think most serious bike guys are buying used and turning wrenches to build their optimal bikes. That will work for a while, but eventually, guys like that will go the way of the dinosaur.
Being a capitalist, I say, let the market decide the future of bikes. That said, I hope that when I'm long gone, there are still guys who want the wind in their face, loud pipes, and 100+ HP under their ass.
Did you notice that they all had the exact same model bike with the exact same accessories on them after a certain point in the show?
I was once a biker. Son and Grandson of a bikers.
Something I noticed about real motorcycle clubs was there was very rarely two of any kind of bike that matched. Individualism.
Even if it was as small as a sticker on the tank. No two were identical.
It was simple to make a bike your own. Somehow, HD fucked that up to while at the same time offering MORE choices in customization. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU OFFER MORE CHOICES YET EVERYONE IS RIDING THE SAME BIKE?
The mind reels.
Neve watched the show, but I did run with a MC back in the ancient times... 'course not a "real" 1% club or anything, I always rode Honda bikes... Was more interested in riding than "US made" since the Harley bikes in the late 70's and early 80's were complete garbage... But, yeah, we all did our own thing, no 2 bikes were even close... Only way you could tell is that we all wore the same colors... The specifics on the bike did not matter at all. I suspect HD failed to realize this was their core audience when yuppies were buying bikes as investments... But no more....
ReplyDelete'Real Bikes' have been and still are very much individually specialized. And there's a thing where you take something from an enemy's bike and make it your own. The outlaw biker culture, the real outlaw bikers, are much more into their bikes than even the ones on "SoA."
ReplyDeleteI find it very funny that the HD display at Sturgis was a ghost town. HD has done pissed off the very group of people that have kept the name afloat through, as Paul says, the complete garbage period, the 'HD is only for ruffians' period, the '1st' and '2nd' and 'Nth' time the company was going under.
The corporate HD survivors of the Biker Woke War are going to look back on this and say, "If only we'd been as stupid as Bud Light" as they huddle in their corporate offices while watching actual rice-burners take over the nation.
Dumb Masses. First only build their crap here in the US while all the components are made overseas. Then move the assembly to 'Hecho en Mexico' and then grab the Rainbow stupidity.
Me? I can appreciate a work of art like an old school Harley. One that's been loved on by its owner to make it a better bike than the company built. I'll never ride, but I understand the pull of the culture. Ubermascularity, some may say. Individualism. A sense of family. A set of moral codes in an unmoral world. Some find religion, some find fishing or sportsmoneyball, some find the Biker Culture.
HD, ya screwed up. Maybe in a 100 years... or maybe not.
I can attest to the uniqueness of biker's rides I saw a Los Vagos chapter on the road yesterday and I occasionally see the local Mongols or Brother Speed chapters on the road.
ReplyDeleteI rode with a club for a bit in the 90s, the one guy with an Electra Glide traded it in on a Gold Wing. We still ran everything from a beater Hobda CX650 to newish BMWs. and no two quite alike. I've ridden a BMW for over 30 years now and while I occasionally tried Harleys, I've never wanted one nor have I ever wanted "the lifestyle". Personally I thought H-D jumped the shark with branded Barbie dolls and clothing stores in shopping malls in the early oughts.
HD has been screwing up by the numbers for a lot longer than you were talking about. During WWII, the government paid them to design and build a boxer-twin, in imitation of the Germans' bikes. They built a thousand of them (good bikes, too!) and then blew the whole thing off. After the war, they could have kept building those as an alternative to V-twins---but they didn't. Even though they owned the design and could have probably done so very easily. After Indian Motorcycles went under, Harley was the only motorcycle company in the US, but when the Japanese came in and showed that there was a market for small, light bikes that weren't big, intimidating hogs, HD couldn't get their minds around the concept and came very close to bankruptcy. Then they snubbed the bikers who chanted "Harley's best, fuck the rest!" because they weren't "respectable" enough, and sold out to AMF, where quality is Job Last. Reagan rescued them, and they went merrily on finding messes to get into.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of Harleys, but between the horrific expense of getting even a used one and the chances of it disappearing in the night, I'd want something else.