What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening… Why should you want to know? If you have been paying attention to the Motor Company news you have heard a lot of stuff but not many facts. In the previous issue of HD, I said you gotta know your history. Well, read below for a short history of Harley repeating itself today with its response to the Great Recession and now Covid-19.

The fact is that Harley still turned a profit and has enough money in the bank to see it through for another year. Compare that to Polaris’ US$300 million Covid-19 loan, Volkswagen’s Dieselgate and Nissan’s US$420 million loss in 2020!

Back in 2009, an outsider, Keith Wandell took over as CEO of Harley-Davidson at the height of the Great Recession. Harley had been riding a wave of success for a long time. Perhaps the motto could have been, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Well it indeed needed fixing.

Its plants needed retooling, the tried and true bikes were well past their use-by-date. With the exception of the desperately needed MY09 Touring frame, the 1957 Sportster and 1984 Softail were still agricultural.

Harley too had been lazing around with its international markets and info technology.

Wandell came in and inspired the people, strengthened the dealer network and built on the Harley culture. He made the Company leaner and more productive generating the same profit from a lower sales volume.

Enter 2013 when he introduced Project Rushmore – thus rejuvenating the Touring line and setting the mark for updating the Softails.

2009 http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1880092,00.html

2013 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stripped-down-harley-rebounds-from-recession/

2014 https://www.barrons.com/articles/ceo-keith-wandell-has-revved-up-harley-davidsons-engine-1419652895

But sales have flatlined in the recent years.

Let’s face it, our culture has changed. People are buying pushbikes again!

One thing for sure is the fact that motorcycles and cars today are just a whole lot better and don’t need replacing. Global warming and things like plastic wastes are demanding some very basic changes in how we live and treat our spaceship Earth.

Don’t for a minute think that everything was rosy back in the good ole days after the buy-back from AMF. Some people today think that the FXDR 114 and LiveWire are like shooting in the dark! What about the Aermacchi, Café Racer XLCR, Holiday Rambler, Buell, VR1000 Superbike, MV Augusta, and the Softail Rocker?

1960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aermacchi#1960s_and_beyond

1977 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harley-Davidson_XLCR

1981 https://www.harley-davidson.com/us/en/museum/explore/archives/did-you-know/amf-buyback.html

1986 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_Rambler

1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buell_Motorcycle_Company

1994 https://www.cycleworld.com/sport-rider/hog-wild/

2008 https://newatlas.com/harley-davidson-acquires-mv-agusta-group/9632/

2008 https://www.cycleworld.com/2007/08/13/first-ride-2008-harley-davidson-rocker/

Jump to 2019 and the world is getting long overdue for a financial reset. Heck, Harley is still selling heaps of bikes compared to anyone else in the heavyweight league… and paying dividends to its shareholders. Then came 2020…

Enter Jochen Zeitz: The Fixer and The Rewire.

Not at all an outsider but a man with a vision. I bet you didn’t know the biggest hits Harley has ever had were ideas from outside the Company like the Softail, Fat Boy and even the Batwing…

Dave Cohen, our News Editor, summarised it on HD’s Facebook page where he said “The Company’s critics have been writing it off regularly for more than 100 years and yet it still continues to put out products that we admire and covet.”

Dave asked us all for our two cents worth so here is mine:

• Jochen using Keith Wandell’s playbook has reopened the plants in Milwaukee and York and will build bikes we want. The Harley wannabes of the past and future will buy these bikes and dealers won’t be forced to store unwanted bikes on their showroom floors.

• The Motor Company will stay profitable by not diluting the heart and soul of the Company by making cheapened bikes. It will not try to compete with the mass produced, make a dime on each bike; but rather, fairly price its bikes and keep the quality on the top rung.

• I think the bikes people still want and are willing to pay the price for are the CVOs for the Alpha riders, the Touring line with both chromed and blackened models, and the Softails cutting back to the core models that are selling now. The Street 500/750s are a niche with sunk costs and production in India that will soldier along as long as the dealers ask for them. Remember, in my day, Sportsters were sold with a 12-month full buyback/trade-in guarantee from the Motor Company on a new Big Twin. ν The Chinese HD 338s will depend on who is US President in 2021.

2020 https://riders.drivemag.com/news/2020-harley-davidson-338-launch-date-set-for-june

• The real question is, when will the Pan Am 1250 dirt bike and Bronx city pavement ripper hit the showroom floors? And of course for my money, the Custom 1250 V-Rod replacement!

Remember the V-Rod’s 1250cc Revolution engine was designed in coordination with Porsche? I wonder how things are going for the Revolution Max 1250/975/500 modular engines? I think that they are really for the Euro, Australian and world markets as a replacement for the Sportster’s non-compliant Euro 5 engines. The air-cooled Sportster engines cannot be sold in Europe after 1 January 2021. That in effect says it all. The Revolution Max engined bikes will be on the market in January.

2021 https://www.motorcycle.com/features/what-you-need-to-know-about-euro-5-emission-standards-for-motorcycles.html

I expect the 2021 Model Year release to be in March of next year at Daytona Bike Week and with no unpopular models and less colour selections. I hopefully await the the Custom 1250 V-Rod replacement with its 1250cc 145hp engine.

Finally, for Harley history repeating itself, read Jochen Zeitz’ Transcript of Harley-Davidson 2020 Q1 Earnings Call and and his 2019 vision for Harley and “A More Sustainable Future”…

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/04/28/harley-davidson-hog-q1-2020-earnings-call-transcri.aspx

https://www.harley-davidson.com/content/dam/h-d/documents/about-us/responsibility/global/article-sustainability-report-en.pdf