If Harley is smart, they’ll lean super hard into this.
I’m serious. The kinds of people who are mad about this hang around HD’s neck like a one ton albatross. The reason fewer young people are riding is precisely because we don’t want to be associated with the stereotypical Harley rider, and even Millennials like me who got into motorcycles anyway will buy literally anything but a Harley because of the association.
Harley changing its image would be a painful process, but it’s absolutely necessary if they don’t want to continue the slow fade out that they’ve been doing the past few decades. Of course I don’t think they’ll do it - these accusations are totally baseless, Harley isn’t trying to reinvent itself it’s just trying to figure out how to squeeze its aging fanbase harder and harder, a strategy that looks better quarter to quarter but will only cause the cliff they eventually fall off to be higher.
Yeah, I agree. It’s amazing to me how much opportunity they’ve wasted. When flat tracker builds saw a resurgence after the cafe racer craze, Harley could have had an absolute lock on that market by selling an xr750 look-alike with a fiberglass tail section, tracker bars, and 18"/19" wheel combo. Literally just slapping some different plastic, bars, and rear wheel onto the Sportster - they would have sold tons of them. The new pan america is the absolute slightest shift towards making a bike that people spending $15k on motorcycles in 2024 might want, a big comfortable softroader tourer, and predictably the harley t-shirt wearers got mad as hell about it and still side eye the bikes when they see them.
Reminds me a little bit of Porsche and their customers raging at any divergence from the air cooled rear engine format, but Porsche wised up, ignored them, and now they sell sedans and SUVs and they sell a lot of them.
If Harley is smart, they’ll lean super hard into this.
I’m serious. The kinds of people who are mad about this hang around HD’s neck like a one ton albatross. The reason fewer young people are riding is precisely because we don’t want to be associated with the stereotypical Harley rider, and even Millennials like me who got into motorcycles anyway will buy literally anything but a Harley because of the association.
Harley changing its image would be a painful process, but it’s absolutely necessary if they don’t want to continue the slow fade out that they’ve been doing the past few decades. Of course I don’t think they’ll do it - these accusations are totally baseless, Harley isn’t trying to reinvent itself it’s just trying to figure out how to squeeze its aging fanbase harder and harder, a strategy that looks better quarter to quarter but will only cause the cliff they eventually fall off to be higher.
Also, Harleys are ridiculously overpriced and two to three generations behind everyone else.
Yeah, I agree. It’s amazing to me how much opportunity they’ve wasted. When flat tracker builds saw a resurgence after the cafe racer craze, Harley could have had an absolute lock on that market by selling an xr750 look-alike with a fiberglass tail section, tracker bars, and 18"/19" wheel combo. Literally just slapping some different plastic, bars, and rear wheel onto the Sportster - they would have sold tons of them. The new pan america is the absolute slightest shift towards making a bike that people spending $15k on motorcycles in 2024 might want, a big comfortable softroader tourer, and predictably the harley t-shirt wearers got mad as hell about it and still side eye the bikes when they see them.
Reminds me a little bit of Porsche and their customers raging at any divergence from the air cooled rear engine format, but Porsche wised up, ignored them, and now they sell sedans and SUVs and they sell a lot of them.
death to prosche. gulag anyone who buys a porsche