How Harley-Davidson's All-In Bet on Its Past Crippled Its Future
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
To the first point, motorcycle sales in the US never really recovered from the recession, and it doesn't seem like they're coming back anytime soon. Is this because new motorcycles (regardless of brand) cost more than they used to, a lack of disposable income among the target audience, or failure of motorcycle manufactures to branch out to new audiences? I don't have the answers to these questions, but I think that they all play a role into the sales decline.
Secondly (and more specific to Harley), the used motorcycle market is HUGE. Go on Craigslist and look at the motorcycles that are on sale. Near me, it seems that every 3rd or 4th bike is a Harley. When the used market is so large and the models don't change that much from year to year, why would you buy new when you could pick up a slightly used bike and save 10% to 20% off of the sticker price?
Kind of sucks if this is really hurting the company.
Companies that design things that last should be somehow rewarded. This is important and needs to be figured out. Otherwise we will drown in garbage that self-destructs after warranty expiration or things that are deliberately un-repairable.
Planned obsolescence is not as "smart" as some people make it out to be. It wastes natural resources, contributes to pollution, makes things less reliable and removes incentives to produce real innovation in the future.
Edit:
There is another post here that points out that Harleys might not be particularly reliable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18450005
Definitely worth reading. I wonder how a motorcycle can be unreliable and have a large second-hand market at the same time. Are they highly modular? Can you easily build one working motorcycle out of two broken ones?
I suspect the issue is not that their bikes last so long per se, but rather that so many people buy them, don't ride them much and then decide to stop riding motorcycles. There is probably a fairly high amount of purchases that go to middle-aged dudes looking for a new hobby that give it up pretty quickly.
Yet Harley have changed so little that they haven't had the benefits of handling and reliability all the other manufacturers have. Riding a new one is like teleporting back to my youth. Mostly for the wrong reasons.
I test rode one a few years ago and it quickly told me I'll never have a Harley.
To explain, the Triumph Bobber looks beautifully like an old hard tail. Like all the Triumph classics it handles and runs like a decent modern bike. It's got cartridge forks, Brembos, ABS, traction control and the reliable twin engine. There's way more ground clearance than I'm ever likely to run out of.
Harleys finally actually go around corners, but still pretty reluctantly. Still way too easy to ground without trying. They'll pair the big engine with a miniscule tank for range around 100m, sometimes down near 50! They're hot, heavy, and slow, you get OK but uninspiring handling with simple suspension, but the single disc up front never felt enough thanks to all that weight. Then they charge more than just about everyone else, but still have a reputation for being unreliable. That leaves just the big V twin sound and looks to buy for.
The Bobber is everything Harley could be doing, yet costs lots less than most Harleys. They have more than enough reputation, and they have more than enough decent looking bikes in their history to remake as modern classics.
The article points out how owners are getting older, having more health issues, etc. and that the bikes aren't actually used for anything but fun rides on the weekends.
Harley Davidson is an incredibly powerful brand, but it's not a brand built off of ultra reliability and the creation of long lasting vehicles.
It was a 1984 Honda NightHawk 650. It cost me $5 to fill the fuel tank ($0.50/L)
That same bike now costs $1000-$1500. Depending on amount of work needed. (and would cost $20 to fill the fuel tank)
So it's a multi-part problem.
(a) disposable income
(b) actual cost
Used bikes are too damn expensive for what you are getting. If I can buy a used car (from a newer model year) for LESS then the cost of an older motorcycle then the 'value' proposition will never make sense.
I'd love to ride again. Until these 'hobby items' get priced accordingly they won't catch on again.
I'd also suggest that the 'kids' today grew up with helicopter parents and had to wear 'bike helmets' and other 'safety' gear. Being left alone to get a broken arm or other chances to 'get hurt' is a good thing. I wonder if we haven't scared that out of too many kids.
Suspension design has also remained really simple to my eyes compared to cars. Maybe it can't be improved, but the last major innovation/change in suspension was in the mid 70's with single shock design.
Harley absolutely feels like a fashion thing to me. I know a few folks who really like them, but it doesn't seem to be based on anything other than "they're Harleys, man." I don't think the Harley brand is going to die off, but it does feel a bit pigeonholed right now as the rough and tumble, leather & dome helmets type of rider right now. Honda doesn't feel like any particular type of bike. I don't feel like I should be wearing anything in particular on it, and I haven't had anyone look at me oddly for riding a matte black cruiser with a high-vis helmet yet. I feel like I would've if I were on a Harley.
At some point they killed themselves with the myopic nature of metrics. understanding the average rider age of a harley led them to start investing in motor homes and golf carts assuming the market was going to vanish underneath them. At the same time, the Milwaukee managers froze the plant in time out of sheer terror that any change would drive away their customers. in the 80's the "engine sound" patent was recognized which only nailed Harleys other foot to the floor.
Harley still ran on a chain primary drive by 2007...the last car that ran on this was the Packard in 1930. The only innovation that came to this was plastic guide shoes to replace the old metal ones out of a cost saving effort that basically empowered the transmission to kill the bike after 20,000 miles.
Management went completely deaf. in 2001 the death wobble for Dyna's sold to the california highway patrol was ignored twice by the company, and once proven by CHP riders on a closed course, the company begrudgingly issued a parts fix but no recall, and no replacement. Harley in 2010 still had single crankpin, inlay type piston rod engine made largely from pot steel iron that pushed 650lbs in their smallest sportster motorcycles. They were failing a plurality of foreign emissions controls for both noise and air quality but didnt seem to care. 33 years ago most managers remembered the tariff they lobbied government for, and how it saved harley. They expected another one.
comparatively they were getting crushed by better bikes. Japan had double crankpin, liquid cooled, fuel injected, balanced and computerized engines that outlasted harley davidson by hundreds of thousands of miles and ran on low maintenance solutions like belt drive and shaft drive that didnt need service for 100,000 miles. Even japans air cooled monsters like the Yamaha Raider 1900cc in 2006 could idle comfortably in 100 degree summer heat...something Harleys largest models that were still 300cc's smaller could not achieve without shutting down a cylinder and entering "parade mode"
Harleys v-rod, their only new design, came from Porsche, and their new exhaust came from a consortium of other motorcycle manufacturers who offered options and techniques for compliance. They desperately want to get out of the manufacturing business and into the 'branding' business. Sure, the milwaukee 8 is a nice new engine, but at 40-50 grand for a new dyna glide, harley still misses the point.
Gone are the boomers that will drop that kind of money. I'll go for a Honda Goldwing which is not only more powerful, but more reliable and cheaper, than a new bagger.
Harley arguably isnt a motorcycle company at all, its desperately trying to just be a household brand. Better US motorcycle companies like Victory and indian (polaris) exist with modern double overhead cam design, liquid cooling and keyless start to name a few features, but victory learned the hard way what it means to go toe to toe with a brand that exists as a living anachronism.
And they know it.... or did at one time.
"We're in the fashion business," Willie Davidson, the grandson of Harley co-founder William A. Davidson told People in 1981. "No one needs a motorcycle. It's your toy or hobby. It has to do something for your ego."
And like any fashion business, if you lock into a demographic, you're left with nothing once that demographic dies out.
And Harley’s response—an electric bike called the LiveWire set to debut next year—isn’t so much of a Hail Mary as it is a capitulation. It also won’t be nearly enough.
Zero Motorcylces: www.zeromotorcycles.com is shipping electric bikes right now and has ten, or almost ten, years of experience actually doing so. What's HD going to add to that besides branding?
In some ways they may be better off by just doubling down on what they are good at. It's similar to the situation Kodak faced, should they embrace the new technologies knowing they probably won't be very competitive or just soldier on and make the most of a declining market.
I read recently that the chairman of Fiat said they aren't working on electric cars at the moment because they would rather be late than wrong.
- Doesn't weigh more than the moon
- Can do 0-60 in 2.5 seconds or so
- Has a top speed >150mph
- Has fuel economy >40mpg (imperial)
- Has decent wind protection
- Hard, capacious luggage (both panniers and topbox)
- New OTR cost of £15-20k, ideally at the lower end of that range
The fundamental problem with Harley Davidson is they're all show and no go. All that sound and thunder sadly amounts to very little.
Triumph and Moto Guzzi do better, and the latter have embraced a more modern/futuristic aesthetic (as with the Suzuki M109R BOSS), but for almost all cruisers (Rocket 3 aside) power disappointingly tops out at around 100 +/- 20 bhp.
Yes, that's right: I'm saying I want it all, and I'm making no apology whatsoever for that. I want the riding style and looks of a cruiser (or futuristic cruiser), married to the light weight and performance of a sports or hyperbike (ZZR1400 weighs in at a "mere" 270kg or so).
Motorcycle companies: I know you can do this so please stop faffing around and get on with it.
There's only 3 production motorcycles here which can do 0-60 in 2.5 sec. You're asking for a cruiser which accelerates faster than, say, the (200hp supercharged liter bike) Ninja H2, with "capacious luggage", while getting double its fuel economy, and costing less.
I think if any motorcycle company could drastically increase performance and efficiency while dropping prices, they would. Harley's brand is married to vintage styling but others are not. Bragging rights for "fastest bike" have been hotly contested over the years.
There are some bikes which get close to your brief; you mentioned the Rocket III but if you're willing to compromise on what a cruiser would look like you've also get the Ducati Diavel. I'm not sure how much more room there is in this segment.
I think in some ways that's probably part of the problem Harley Davidson. New genres of motorcycles have come an gone without them making any attempt at competing with them.
Maybe they really can't do it. Cars are doing some pretty impressive things with their engines these days with regard to fuel economy and performance, but they also sell orders of magnitude more units, and can afford to dedicate enormous engineering resources to engine development to achieve that performance. Motorcycle engines, like lawn mower engines, seem to be permanently stuck technologically in the 1970s.
Also, there is a bit of a diminishing returns element. My motorcycle (SV650) had an engine originally designed in the 90s, slightly modernised with some electronics and it gets 60+mpg comuting to West London. If it got another 10mpg it'd save maybe £2 a week in fuel, which means the return on investment time is basically infinite.
But most motorcycles seem to do much worse, more like 40mpg (US). My car gets about that, while being many times heavier. Motorcycles generally have terrible fuel economy considering their size and power.
Sorry, what...?
That seems doubtful...
A Harley owner once told me that he'll never buy a silent electric bike. He was also worried about people not noticing a silent bike coming and crossing the road at the wrong moment.
(Argh. "Loud pipes save lives." Gah.)
Modern motorcycles are way, way safer than an early 80's CB750. ABS, traction control, brakes and tires that are light years ahead of 80's tech, lighter weight, more agile etc. The only reason to ride a CB750 is because they're cool, not safer!
1. As 'more modern' bikes are lighter, have better brakes, suspension/handling and most importantly ABS.
2. Harley can't move on with the times. They did with their 'V-Rod' featuring a 'modern' liquid cooled engine designed by Porsche. They discontinued it this year. Harley riders want the old Harley image.
They're trying to pivot into new markets as their customer base is becoming too old to ride or simply dying off. https://www.harley-davidson.com/us/en/motorcycles/future-veh...
They are incredible fun but unquestionably dangerous.
Or maybe they are self aware. Realistically only a very small share of the people who are riding a 100+hp bike can really handle that power.
I, for one, have refused to purchase a sport bike on numerous occasions - including my "dream bike" - because I know its too much bike and that might get me into trouble. I've never felt that way about any of my cruisers or dirt bikes.
If I go modern I'll probably get something like an SV650.
It's more the ability to ride long distances comfortably I want not pant wetting speed.
The biggest transformation of bikes the last 20 years has been handling. Now they generally all handle pretty well, with a few exceptions. So if you like the style of early CBs and Zs, pick one of the many retro remakes that have come out in the last 10 or so years.
For small displacement bikes that are light, inexpensive, and reliable, you could consider the Honda CB300F, which is available with ABS and a modern 300cc engine. If you must have a slightly more retro style, there's the Suzuki TU250X - it's a solid all-around bike, but no ABS.
Both will likely be just as fast as the older CB750, handle better, stop better, and probably not cost much more money (CBs have gone way up in value, plus whatever time you spend brining it back to reliable condition).
If you want a mid-displacement bike, yeah, they're fast, a bit more money, but still better bikes in just about every way compared to anything form the 70s.
Ride on, old dudes.
Gibson feels a bit more stuck to an image, but it doesn't feel old and crusty the way Harley does.
It's the equivalent of a child banging a drum for attention.
The electric bike will sell poorly and HD will retreat back into its market for obnoxious hogs. One day when that market goes away, they can sell the brand to some Chinese billionaire and call it a day.
Any company that operates profitably for a generation is a success in my book regardless of how it ends.