quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Last year I bought a Pan America. Great bike with lots of technology and Harley got most things right to compete in the adventure bike market. I wanted to buy American (previous bike was BMW) and support the local dealer. Sounds good, right? Until there are problems with the bike! The local dealer has tried to do the right thing by me to address the issues but its clear they are in over their heads when it comes to troubleshooting problems. And I dont think H-D is giving them the support they need to service this bike.
The result is this is my first and last Harley.

My son-in-law has always rode HD. He too was attracted to Harley’s entry into the “adventure bike” market,” and traded in a Road King that he had ridden all over the country for it. Like you, he’s had many problems with it. Now that they have two young girls, he doesn’t ride as often as he used to. He decided to go for a ride this past weekend and had to turn around and come back home—-electrical problems.

Main issue with mine: Engine shuts off without warning. In traffic! Lots of tries to fix the problem but no success. No codes stored.
Really stupid battery placement under the motor and directly behind the front wheel, ensuring lots of road debris gets thrown onto the battery. The nav system is phone based. No signal, no nav! Really stupid for a bike that is rideable in the back country.
No more Harleys for me!

Harley's between a rock and a hard place. Their traditional air cooled V-twins are being strangled by ever tightening emissions and noise regs with the Sportster completely gone now. Other than the Pan America, their new water cooled bikes are ergonomic disasters as well as just awful looking, Polaris is doing a better job with the Indian line.

Management and the board of directors have made SO many bad decisions it's a wonder HD is still even around. They lost a ton of money over the last 8-9 years developing a battery motorcycle which predictably flopped. Before that, back around 2008 when Harley was doing well and had a lot of money they purchased Italian manufacture MV Agusta for $110,000,000 plus took over $70,000,000 of MV Debt. Two years later they sold the company back to the previous owners for $5. Yes that's FIVE dollars! But only after putting $20,000,000 in MV's checking account so the new owners could operate.

I have no interest in Harley's newer motorcycles but I did recently pick up a 2008 Sportster XL1200R. I started a few days ago going over it, cleaning, changing fluids, and finished polishing the wheels and replacing the original tires today. It came out pretty nice I should have taken a picture, this is it when I first got it.

Having worked in PR and comms at HD during my career there, I find it hilarious that Harley-Davidson was spelled wrong once in that statement. lol.

It's also a bunch of meaningless mumbo-jumbo that won't result in corporate actually doing anything different, but they are at least hoping it will knock some of the heat down.

Harley-Davidson Changes DEI Policy Following Activist Pressure

Harley-Davidson HOG 0.79%increase; green up pointing triangle is the latest major company to make changes to its diversity policy after online pressure started by conservative activist Robby Starbuck.

The motorcycle maker said Monday that it will no longer participate in a scoring system by the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group that gives companies scores based on LGBTQ+ inclusion in their workplace. Harley-Davidson said it would review all its sponsorships, saying that it will focus on retaining its “loyal riding community.” And it will no longer have spending goals to buy from suppliers owned by minorities or women.

Harley-Davidson said that it had already ended its DEI policy in April after an internal stakeholder review of its policies earlier this year.

“We do not have a DEI function today,” the company’s statement on X said.

Starbuck began targeting Harley-Davidson on July 23 on X, saying the company has supported LGBTQ+ causes and shown “a total commitment to DEI policies.”

Starbuck launched similar campaigns against farm supplies seller Tractor Supply and tractor maker Deere. Both companies changed their DEI policies. Starbuck says he doesn’t invest in the companies he targets.

“We are saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks,” Harley-Davidson said in the statement Monday, which didn’t mention Starbuck.

A Harley-Davidson spokesman didn’t provide additional details beyond the statement.

“I feel like these are important changes,” Starbuck said Monday.


Robby Starbuck says he targets companies that he thinks have conservative customers. PHOTO: WILLIAM DESHAZER FOR WSJ
Starbuck, a 35-year-old filmmaker, began his online campaigns in June, stoking outrage about what he calls companies’ “woke” DEI initiatives. He said he decided to go after DEI policies after a Tractor Supply employee reached out to him and asked him to investigate.

Many of his 500,000 followers on X have chimed in on his criticisms, including retweets from billionaire Elon Musk, who bought X, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022.

“Doesn’t sound super compatible with their customers,” Musk said in response to a tweet by Starbuck about Harley-Davidson’s DEI policy.

Starbuck told The Wall Street Journal in an interview earlier this month that he thinks his campaigns work because he targets companies that he thinks have conservative customers. He said he has a list of other companies he plans to target after Harley-Davidson.

Eric Bloem, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president of programs and corporate advocacy, said that diversity and inclusion are important to the success of any business.

“The motorcycle community, including a diverse range of individuals such as those from the LGBTQ+ community, reflects this reality,” Bloem said. “Harley-Davidson should remain committed to its core values, actively engaging with its customers and resisting divisive rhetoric against corporate diversity initiatives.”

^^^^^
Thanks for your post. I like good news with my first cup of coffee!

Until Zeitz and the rest of the board are replaced I see dark clouds on the horizon all related to product development and marketing.

The M8 big twin was a forward step. Now for the fall behinds.

First thing, the MoCo has no entry level bikes since the Street 500/750’s went away, not that those were the best they could have done. Originally designed and sold in India as commuter bikes (our parts books here listed saree guards with a valid part number) and used in the Riding Academy classes nonetheless it introduced many non traditional H-D customers to the product line and the dealerships.

Once the Street was discontinued the MoCo had to scramble to get a small lightweight bike for the Academy. They looked to China and their partnership with the Qianjiang group and brought their joint marketed HD350 which shares much with a small Benelli (also owned by Qianjiang) here as training bikes but no plans to introduce the bike for sale here. Way to go for making customers for life.

The discontinuation of the air cooled 883 and 1200 Sportster. The Sportster actually started with the K model in 1952, a flathead design which evolved into the OHV 900 Sportster in 1957. Again, a lower priced H-D product that brought many into the MoCo fold. Well, since the introduction of the Pan American and now the new Sportsters, MSRP for the lowest priced Nightster is a buck under 12k.
Again, another miss.

The Pan America, great concept but bad timing when it was introduced. Accessory availability was hit or miss, took me a year to get one particular item for a customer. I know that that wasn’t all the fault of the MoCo but the customers didn’t understand that, all they knew is that they bought a high dollar toy and couldn’t use it.

Then we come to the discontinuation of the Dyna series, a more sporty bike then the touring bikes that I’ll refer to as baggers because of the factory installed saddlebags. Harley decided to upgrade and improve the suspension and frame design of the Softail, the bike design made to mimic the look of the pre 1958 rigid frames. The Softail was great for the around town Latte crowd but sucked for long rides, too mushy. But image being omnipresent the MoCo dumped who knows how much to redesign (again) the Softail, again trying to make it something it wasn’t intended for and dumped the Dyna in the trash pile. The Dyna always has been a valid alternative to the heavier baggers and could and were used for touring, around town riding and some models outfitted as police models, the FXRP series, a more maneuverable bagger when outfitted for that use.

We won’t even get into the Pan America and the Sportster production being moved to Thailand for only the 2025 model year allegedly I say smokescreen. Doesn’t make financial sense at all. They killed the K.C. factory in 2018-2019 moving that production to York Pa.

I don’t believe the DEI crap will go away, it’ll just become hidden better under Zeitz and this BOD regime. Zeitz and the BOD need to leave.

Agree Zeitz and the BOD need to go, it isn't that HD agrees to "stop the DEI" programs, it's that they thought it was a good idea to begin with.

Zeitz is making HD money with his dump the small and go with expensive high option bikes like CVO's and sell them for big profit per units, but he was also helped by the DemPanic, since the only vehicles produced were higher cost as manufacturing companies put the chips they had/could get into higher margin vehicles, Ford, Toyota, GM, HD all did this, you couldn't find a base F150 to haul your base level Street Glide, only a $100K Electric Pickup with a $50K bagger on a trailer.

The Dyna/Softail line was curious, but I can see from an engineering and manufacturing perspective, having one less line to support and still being able to deliver the two lines makes financial sense.

If I decide to get a new bike from HD it will be downsizing the RG ULtra to a Heritage, lighter easier to cruise and I'm not crossing the country. Really like the Low Rider ST, with the bigger engine it flys, riding position is a bit cramped though with mid controls.

Sportster is a nice line, but like you said the EPA has been killing HD on noise and emissions, the M8 was a big leap and cost to create, the new engines in the Sportster lineup are much better than the ones of old.

Wasn't aware of the problems with the Pan America, I've ridden several and not once had an issue, and that was on Demo bikes that get the crap beat out of them.

Still DEI had no place at HD and it was incorporated not to placate the investment DEI crowd pushing lending and investment activity based on DEI programs but by a Socialist European German (yes thats redundant) CEO.

He needs to go....

quote:

I don’t believe the DEI crap will go away, it’ll just become hidden better under Zeitz and this BOD regime. Zeitz and the BOD need to leave.

Yeah, their response seems to be more of an "Oh, shit, how do we hide this?" than a true come to Jesus moment.
I've never had a Harley, but I wouldn't buy one now.
I'd kind of like a mid 2000's Yamaha V-star.

Based on all that's gone on at HD....their financial decisions and the target group of buyers, I can't imagine anyone investing in HOG.

I never could understand what Zeitz brought to the table. I said this in 2020.

Certainly he had success at Puma but athletic shoes are a lot different than motorcycles. He had zero experience from what I’ve seen in any motive vehicle products. Too many times has corporate America assumed that the leaders of a company doesn’t need any product knowledge prior to getting behind the desk.

Immediately after he was named CEO there was (again my uneducated opinion) that nothing was coming out of him but word salad. Statements using words like sustainability, environmental, equality, new direction, all these things made me uncomfortable.

Breaking Livewire off from the MoCo, I didn’t understand that move then or today. Estimated total sales for. What I’ve read as of the end of February this year is around 1700 since introduction. Only thing I can see is that it was a cash infusion for the MoCo, almost two billion I think.

Unless the stockholders and investment firms holding ownership start asking questions and force a change at the top I’m afraid that history will repeat itself but this time it won’t be AMF or an employee buyout as under Vaughn Beals stepping up to rescue it but a Chinese firm taking ownership.

quote:

t a Chinese firm taking ownership.

That would end HD's viability as a company in the USA, HD is more than just a motorcycle company, imagine that Indian will explode in sales as a result.

I would not be surprised to see H-D offload the Pan America in the same way they did the LiveWire.

Zeitz is an egotistical ass who runs the company like it's his name on the tank. He's made a few good decisions, but overall has done more damage than good to the company, especially to the intern al corporate culture and morale, which is at an all-time low.

The spinoff of Livewire was done in part to make it easier to jettison when the inevitable time comes that HD decides to stop bleeding money it can't afford to keep losing on that boondoggle. There was some hope it could build a strong brand on its own not being tied to the baggage (good and bad) the came along with HD, but also some hope it could attract significant outside investment. However, it came too late to benefit from the excessive exuberance for electrification that has come and gone, so now they are stuck with it.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
I would not be surprised to see H-D offload the Pan America in the same way they did the LiveWire.

Who did they sell the livewire off to?

My dad was a Harley lover, actually Indian first then Harley. He never liked the fact that I owned a Japanese cruiser, later on crotch rocket :-)

Anyway, before my dad passed away, I took him a few times to the local HD dealer (Bruce Rossmeyer) which was always empty. Then in 2011 or so the Pompano beach Florida dealership closed and we attributed it to loss of sales and Bruce's death.

Even though I don't own a HD, it's sad to see an American Icon fail for any reason.

quote:

Originally posted by downtownv:

Who did they sell the livewire off to?

Harley didn't sell, rather they separated Livewire off to be its own entity. I guess that makes it easier to sell, if anyone would want it.

quote:

Originally posted by downtownv:

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
I would not be surprised to see H-D offload the Pan America in the same way they did the LiveWire.

Who did they sell the livewire off to?

Livewire was spun off as a separate company a couple of years ago, but HD owns about 90 percent of the shares. Kymco owns most of the rest.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Main issue with mine: Engine shuts off without warning. In traffic! Lots of tries to fix the problem but no success. No codes stored.
Really stupid battery placement under the motor and directly behind the front wheel, ensuring lots of road debris gets thrown onto the battery. The nav system is phone based. No signal, no nav! Really stupid for a bike that is rideable in the back country.
No more Harleys for me!

YooperSig,

Have they investigated the Crankshaft Position Sensor intermittently going open circuit and mimicking the engine being shut off? If that sensor is going open circuit the computer will “think” the ignition is being shut off hence no failure code.

As noted until the CEO and board are replaced it’s all lip service. They will just recycle these DEI employees back into HR under different titles.

Also, I’m pretty sure the HD buyer demographic even the “Dykes on Bikes” demographic etc. isn’t keen on the manufacture being off shored to Thailand. HD will just get crushed as long as they move forward with making the bikes there. Small suppliers in Milwaukee will get crushed as well.
I would posit that your average big burly biker will walk before he straddles a made in Thailand bike. He’s going to Indian or any of several small name makers of US built bikes. I see an uptick in value of older US made HD bikes.