Just by chance I happened to listen to an Audiobook by Sonny Barger of the Hell's Angels last month. Audible felt like giving me a free audiobook and I was looking for something different.

While those guys still stick to the American made thing they admitted years ago they'd be better riding Asian bikes. Back in the day you could at least say you got a lot of chromed out parts with the Harley for the price you paid. Now most everything is plastic but the price hasn't changed. Plastic is fine but the price has to change. Harley cant change the price with labor costs so they opened another factory or two. And they made that decision long before the tariffs. Asia in particular is an untapped market for Harley with hundreds of millions of riders. It only makes sense.

Trump is an idiot but there is of course more to the story.

i have no problem with harley globalizing and making their bikes similar to asians... they absolutely should, and there are plenty of products that people mainly buy for the name (craftsman, kleenex)

i have a big problem with the president blasting them for doing so.

Harley made a stupid business decision. And they made it way before the tariffs were even put into place. THey have cheapened their product yet held their price to the point where it is not competitive. They will lose in the foreign markets against the better made Japanese bikes that have a larger selection and better quality.

Harley made a stupid business decision. And they made it way before the tariffs were even put into place. THey have cheapened their product yet held their price to the point where it is not competitive. They will lose in the foreign markets against the better made Japanese bikes that have a larger selection and better quality.

my dad is friends with a large contingency of ex harley riders. they are all now in their 60's and have traded them in for big huge travel bikes. like goldwings. much quieter, they can talk to each other in headsets, listen to music, etc etc.

i'm not kidding when i say like hardly any of them ride harleys any more. i never really thought about it until is started seeing all this pres/harley stuff going on.

Yeah. Let's celebrate American manufacturing losing to Asian countries! Because Trump?

Hawaiins are Asian wannabes so of course they ride those crotch rockets.

Harley's domestic sales decline has nothing to do with a cheapened product, it has everything to do with a customer base, that is quite literally dying in the domestic market.

Harley Davidson is a company that has experienced largely declining sales the past number of years as it relates to the US market. The prime consumers of it's products, white baby boomers are aging out of the Harley Davidson market. Put it more simply, it's core US customer is quite literally dying. (Sorry to break it to you, but it's not me speaking, just actuarial tables.)*


* This might be a point of interest for any other company, institution, or organization that receives a disproportionate amount of support, be it monetarily or otherwise, from the baby boom generation.

Absolutely. Young people, if they want to ride at all, dont want to cruise. They want go-fast bikes or have started their own cultures around cheap imports like Tomos Golden Bullets and Russian Urals. Which is odd because like Harley back in the day, those cultures require you to learn about your bike and wrench on it a lot. It was a point of pride back in the day that you had to know how to work on a bike to own a Harley. Shit was going to rattle off. There are still quality issues with with some models of Harley but the acceptance of that has changed. Nobody wants to put up with it anymore. Not even the 1% bikers.

And the weekend warriors who do like to cruise have long realized that the Honda's and BMW's are just better and cheaper with better warranties. The loaded $42,000 Harley touring bike has $10,000 worth of name tacked onto it and offers nothing over the Goldwing. Those Harley's are perfectly reliable and great bikes but you are paying at least $10k more for the name.

Harley also stopped making legacy models and that pissed a lot of people off. These were models that went back the the earliest days of American bike culture. Really uncomfortable bikes to ride back then and they couldn't figure out a way to modernize the ride while keeping the design faithful so they just axed them. A lot of old school guys who dont care about comfort started buying built from scratch bikes when they couldn't find those old models and that further hurt Harley.

The imminent failure of Harley Davidson was going to happen with or without Trump, its just kind of serendipitous that their stories have become interwoven in this way. Or, if you're cynical, maybe Harley Davidson executives see an opportunity for excuse making.

This just isn’t even grounded in fact. Sure Harley might not be growing domestically, but a cursory look at the balance sheet shows there is no plausible near term scenario where Harley fails, bankruptcy, restructure, etc.

It is one thing to not be a growing company, it is entirely different to be on the cusp of imminent failure.

Yeah. Legendary companies are one thing but this has become a kind of niche market. I'm sure that the old Harley bikes will retain a lot of value but this is not a company that has competed well and they will fail. Wonder how all of the old time bad ass "ANGELS" are doing these days? Worked with a guy once at Kaiser Steel out here. Nice guy. He was a COMPUTER PROGRAMMER of all things. Had the jacket and bike and all. From the ORIGINAL CLUB no less. The HELLS ANGELS of California, Fontana chapter:)