Harley-Davidson Blackline

I don't mean to offend anyone in this thread - but I am 24 years old and getting my motorcycle license this Spring. I have a full time job and go to school, with just enough discretionary income to buy a starter/used bike and begin riding. It's true, bike sales are down across the board and I am probably a rare consumer for my demographic - but holy hell. I have to shake my head as that Blackline is a nice looking bike and it will attract a younger buyer, but someone who is 45 instead of 62. Not me.

Harley needs to get their heads out of the sand and wake up to the fact that guys my age don't really associate with Fatboys and their ilk. They need to begin creating new, innovative products that fit within their character, history and brand but that which offer something other than what a 24 year old would associate with that Blackline: a mullet, chaps and skull helmet. If they decide they can't stretch the brand too far, well offer something within the family at Buell... oh whoops, can't do that anymore now can they?

If I sound annoyed and frustrated, it's because it's unbelievable to witness such an historic and loved brand get it so wrong. What would I like to see? How about an 883 Sportser engine in a featherbed style frame, upside forks, dual rear shocks on either side of the rear wheel, a tiny cafe racer seat and dunstall tank with a chain drive. BOOM. A gorgeous bike that's a Harley, badass and an alternative to a supersports bike. Something I'd actually consider being seen on. It's not rocket science. The XR1200 is getting close to the idea (sort of), but call me when I win the lottery.

Oh well.

 

Well said - I think the XR1200 was a half-hearted attempt, and you realize that they originally planned that for Europe only...just showing that they don't get the strategic implications of that.

But I think they need a bike that isn't a Harley. While the V-Rod was also an attempt, they still "Harley'd it up". As you say - that's more for the 45 year old (although I am nearly 45, and I'd like to think I am as sporty as I was as a 25 year old).

The MV Agusta acquisition was simply perfect. Granted, a the product line is a little expensive...but that was a beautiful move, and then a crappy ending. It's very hard to win chess with only a king...

 

To your previous point, Keith Wandell is an accountant, hired from Johnson Controls. I agree with you that his hiring was the beginning of the end. Buell and MV were just costs to him, to get slashed. No vision, no brand awareness, no nothing.

 

Not only an accountant, but an individual with zero, and I do mean ZERO motorcycle experience. He did not have a motorcycle license when he was hired by H-D.

 

Buell could have made cafe racers ... heck they effectively made a modern version, and what I've noticed with m/c's is that being too advanced with technology can cause problems with certain brands.

BMW can do it, and Honda to a degree but the Buell was just too different attempting to be sold and serviced out of extremely conservative dealerships, where having rear suspension is considered a little risky.
Pete

 

The 2003+ air-cooled (Harley engine) Buells had neat design features like the fuel in frame and oil tank in the swingarm. Too bad they were saddled with just a junk engine that virbated itself to death.

As I said earlier the water-cooled Rotax-built engine was much better. The bike was still quirky and felt weird compared to my 999, but had about the same power and felt as though with a little time to get used to it the bike could have been enjoyable. I still would have had to put up with my local ***** Harley dealer though, so I passed.

Harley missed the boat big time in the early 90's when they had the VR1000. People wanted that bike, wanted Harley to build a bike like that, but they couldn't see beyond Fat Boys and Dyna Wide Glides. Imagine they had continued to develop the VR line poaching a few Ducati team members, today almost 20 years later it would probably have similar performance to the 1198 or KTM RC8. If Aprilia could build a 60 degree twin that was almost immediately competitive in WSBK, Harley with many more resources sure as hell could have.

 

The VR1000 was the answer before MV. However, consider the expense of developing something that essentially failed - not sure the market would have consumed it. However, it's fair to say they were making strides with the VR before it was killed off.

Harley has a history of this - Aermacchi, which made some cool (and race winning) technology in the 60's and 70's - was mismanaged and pawned off to the Castiglioni brothers (which then renamed it Cagiva, and then acquired Ducati).

I still believe the answer lies in Italy. The Japanese companies are all parts of huge conglomerates, but the Ducatis of the world are within reach. Ducati, as an example, has tremendous brand recognition and is known by their "technology" (desmodromic valve actuation), so there are similarities to HD.

Not sure how MV will turn out, but maybe there's a play down the road. Assuming (as it looks right now) they will continue to flail about and lose market share, they may get a sense of urgency and do something before too long. That's a story that's been written SOOOO many times before, it's a wonder that corporations don't learn from past mistakes.

Unfortunately, cognitive dissonance on part of management will blind them and they'll erode to a point that they are irrelevant

 

Er, a very emphatic NO!

The reason people that don't own Harleys hate them with a passion is because of their unbelievably cr@p engines. The 45 degree angle is as wrong as incest and yet they keep using it. Why for fncks sake?, you can design the same bike around a 90 degree twin and problem solved.

Also Harley did not design the engine for the V-Rod because they finally accepted that they cannot design engines, and got Porsche to design it for them. I give HD some credit for finally realising they are the worlds worst engine designers.

My father has a mate that used to be a HD mechanic ... his view on their engines are simply that he is amazed they actually run they are so badly engineered. Of course he worked on them probably 20 years ago so they might have made progress since then.

Again an emphatic NO. HD is most definitely not known for anything to do with "technology". They make modern vintage m/c's, nothing more and nothing less. Until they stop using the 45 degree angle they will never make anything that anybody with any concept of engineering will purchase, simple as that.

Again I think the Blackline looks cool, and I would not mind owning a vintage m/c ... but I'd rather it was actually a vintage m/c, not a modern pretender.
Pete

 

The VR1000 was a Harley design that was 60 degree. If it had been brought to the track in 1989 when it was designed rather than 1994, it would have been competitive most likely. They also went outside (Lotus Enginering IIRC) for help gaining horsepower. The VR would have been completely redone for a production application. In some ways the DNA of the VR lived on in the V-Rod, also a 60 degree twin. Porsche assisted in much of the initial life testing and development of the the V-Rod engine.

A decade later Aprilia designed and Rotax built the Mille engines that were also 60 degree, but with multiple balance shafts to help with virbation. The VR had this in spades. Scott Russell hated the bike the year he rode for H-D in part because of this.

Rotax was also contracted to build the Buell Helicon engine. This time a 72 degree twin, again with multiple balance shafts. Just before the closure of Buell, they had a 1190cc version ready to go that had full bodywork and looked the part of a real superbike without excuses. Harley closed the company and confiscated the prototypes. Erik Buell recently surmised the 1190 prototypes were most likely crushed by Harley.

Buell was able to use some of the remaining unsold stock and modify them for track-only bike up until December of last year under the Erik Buell Racing (EBR) name. His non-compete runs out later this year. What he will do from here on our is anyone's guess. While I hated the Sportster-derived engine in previous Buells, I hope he can move to another brand and develop machines that delivered on what Buell always promised just around the corner.

Maybe Bombardier (Rotax) can take lessons learned from the Aprilia and Buell engine designs they built, and build a world beater superbike with Erik Buell as a Tamburini-like figure, sold as a Can-Am.

 

Okay I have learnt something. I did not realise the VR1000 was not a 45 degree twin, and the same with the VRod.

I'm sneaking back into my corner ... but note 60 degree is still wrong, as is 72 or anything other than 90. Even my GS500 (a parellel twin) has a vibration at 5000rpm, but that bad but it is there.
Pete

 

Don't forget the mighty Britten was also a 60 degree. It can be made to work, but obviously from a balance standpoint the 90 is better. The new Aprilia twins are 90 degrees.

 

True. Forgot about the Britten. :Insert embarrassed face:

I would have respected HD more if they had kept pushing on with the VR1000, ie. that is how you learn. You don't give up and go back to producing no-tech vintage bike copies. I'm sure even Morgan have learnt something over the past 100 years?
Pete

 

Awesome bike, I love what Deus does with SR400's too. Exactly what I was trying to describe! Thanks

 

You are also wrong about the engines being crap. Do your research, they consistently rate high in the quality scale. I've owned a number of Harleys and Japanese bikes - the HD quality ranks with the best.

You may not LIKE the engines - I get that. But it's not "crap"...antiquated? Indeed, but by design. These guys aren't stupid, so forget emotion, it's just business and up until now, they did well.

They went to Porsche due to the cost of designing the engine, not because they CAN'T. To educate everyone, HD DID design the VR1000 engine, but outsourced the top end and tweaking to Roush Racing.

 

Heh heh. I remember talking to a V-Rod riding, leather and jean clad badarse at the Rock Store overlook here in Southern California a few years ago. I asked him how he liked his bike, and (out of curiosity) if the fasteners on the bike were metric or standard, as the motor had been engineered by Porsche. Oh no, he assured me; the motor was designed by BMW. I never got an answer to my question.

 

Morgans still use ash chassis - including the Aero8. Does that make it crap? It's certainly antiquated technology, but for Morgan, it's an issue of heritage (with a good dose of marketing), much like Harley and their air-cooled, pushrod engines.

You are thinking technology for technology's sake, not strategy and business. It has nothing to do with what technical acumen they have - it has to do with their willingness - or lack thereof - to pursue a market they don't see as viable to the company's future. I can all but assure you that the engineers at Harley are perfectly capable of designing an engine that would compare with the best. The question is - do they want to? The answer is resoundingly - NO!

When the VR1000 was first deisgned and tested (the program started around 1988), the engine produced around 150HP. In the late 80's / early 90's, that level of power would have put the VR at the head of the pack. To this day, the chassis is considered among the all time best in Superbike racing, and they proved that by getting a pole and running up front at certain tracks without long straights. It was hardly a failure - it was shackled by internal politics and strife.

You might be interested to know that even the "vaunted" Erik Buell fought tooth and nail against the VR1000, likely for self-serving reasons. If you work in a highly-matrixed organization (as I have for 20 years), you understand that there are fiefdoms everywhere that will try to sabotage or kill your pet projects. This is what Steve Scheibe battled on a daily basis, and hence spelled doom for the VR from day 1.

It's this cognitive dissonance that betrays Harley today.

 

The irony of the situation is that early in the VR racing days, there was a discussion to actually produce a street version, but it would have been branded a Buell. Harley had just purchased/bailed-out a broke Erik Buell the year before and actually wanted to grow the brand. Buell had ties with the upper management at Harley at the time from his previous years working there.

IMO, what sunk Buell as a company was the changing political winds within H-D overall. High level managers were replaced and Erik Buell found himself on the outside of the circle. Harley had just spent several million dollars developing the water-cooled engine, in hindsight today it looks like they might have just been feeding Buell rope to eventually hang himself (very expensive rope though). Although Buell should have seen the writing on the wall with the purchase of MV.

The acquisition of MV Agusta was a very curious one. I spoke with a couple of Harley dealers at the time, both said it was to gain access to MV's european dealerships rather than to sell MV in Harley shops across the US. This of course made absolutely no sense to me at the time, again looking back H-D upper management had no idea what to do with the $107M they spent on MV. If they had just done a craniorectal extrication, MV would today be pushing to be the #1 Euro brand sold in the US. Ducati would be seeing lots of pressure from them rather than MV remaining just a niche boutique builder.

 

What a load of rubbish (respectfully), of course they would want to make the best engine for manufacturing cost ratio. Until they I believe got Yamaha involved they could not even keep the oil in.

Oh and 2 days ago I read an article and road test about the VR1000, it was a load of rubbish that needed lots more development. That is the pity because HD appears unwilling to develop their products as I guess does Morgan. Do they really want the same type of market as Morgan, er, no, so develop they need to, witness the Vrod.

I think it is time to do a modern VR1000. But this time be man enough to develop it and that means go through the hard battle and unite the company politics to make it happen.
Pete

 

Yes, Buell wanted the engine, HD didn't let him.

Standard Operating Procedure at HD. Large, matrixed organizations tend to succeed in spite of themselves. There is a contingent within Harley that simply doesn't see the impact of their strategy, choosing to play it safe. Easy to understand why they are, because up until now, they've been successful. Unfortunately, they are effectively sealing their doom. Even if they read Sun Tzu, they might "see the light", but with the decision to sell off MV and kill of Buell, it will be hard to come back.

I could see that - just due to my quote above. They want to push heavyweight cruisers - so they'd pursue a nonsensical strategy like this.

But, if they saw that the emperor had no clothes, they would let MV operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. Help them open a network of dealers in the US, keep what they have in Europe, and the brand could be nurtured and grown.

Read about Digital or Lucent - 2 companies that had a dominant share, but placed bets on a single (and arguably irrelevant) technology - they imploded. Without having a rounded portfolio to secure mutually assured destruction, they were exposed and crushed. The whole time, leadership refused to admit a mistake and reverse course, and the death spiral culminated with both companies all but ceasing to exist (acquired, but shells of their former selves).

Contrast that with companies like Cisco or Apple. I bet many people thought Apple was nuts when they launched the iPod - they don't think so now. They took the risk to avoid the exposure of being a niche OS / computer supplier, and today stand as one of the most influential media companies in the world.

The bad thing is - this is all textbook strategy. Most companies simply don't get it.

 

Harley continues to close a few dealerships and is struggling to recover sales numbers. Dropping every year since 2006.

http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/news/harley-davidson-losing-dealerships/

 

Price to Earnings of 37+? The stock should be 1/4 at most of the current price. Maybe $11 on a good day.

If a company like General Electric could be brought to its knees by self-financing customers who then defaulted, Harley does the same thing and certainly could happen to them as well.

Once all the shorts have been busted (nearing this now I would say), I would expects stocks to have a major correction this summer.

 

Harley Davidson is like Ferrari. Neither makes the most reliable, cheapest or highest performance products, but they both have a mystic that seems to attract loyal owners and non-owner fans that swear by their attributes and accept their faults as character.

 

If I really really had to buy a cruiser I would purchase a Triumph Speedmaster. Sounds good, engine actually idles and does not try to jump out of the frame (I believe) and is a tidy looking bike, and is a respected brand.
Pete