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There's also a big delta between what HD corporate is "envisioning" vs. what the dealerships are pushing. I know a small number of folks who went in looking for an adventure bike or a Sportster, and all they did was try and tell them how they needed at LEAST a Road King with every piece of boomer chrome in the catalog. Most vowed to never step foot in an HD dealership ever again and ended up with KTM's or Yamahas.
I've heard similar stories also, pushy dealer salesmen will always try and push what is most profitable or makes more commission. So I'd agree corp could be trying to vary the market but if the dealer is off putting to first time buyers for something like sportsters (oh you don't want a GIRL bike) they will have a hard time getting "life time" customers and maintain the boomer image they are known for.
FortNine did a good video on Harley's artificial stock inflation buybacks, no longer releasing demographic numbers and playing with financing #s to make sales look stronger than they are along with some other things they are up to.
Well, that's interesting.
I know very little about HD as a company, aside from the fact that the way they treated Buell makes it seem like their intention had been to eliminate the competition and make it look like an accident.
My perception of the core Harley customer differs from the South Park cartoon. Sure, that's the stereotypical biker image, but those guys are just as likely to be on an Indian or a Triumph as a Harley, and they probably didn't buy it new from a dealer.
The core Harley customer, by which I'm talking about revenue, is a dentist or a financial planner, 45-55 years of age, kids are out of the house, and is trying to decide between a V-Rod or a Goldwing. (They've completely overlooked the Suzuki Boulevard M109R.)
They're gonna buy that bike from the dealership, have it serviced at the dealership, and buy a bunch of lifestyle / apparel branded products from the dealership.
Yeah, the boomers are aging out of motorcycle ownership. But white males have been being born, going to college, getting dull unfulfilling jobs which pay very well, and making stupid purchases without the consent of Mrs. Boring, non-stop, since forever ago. And we're still at it.
There's also a big delta between what HD corporate is "envisioning" vs. what the dealerships are pushing. I know a small number of folks who went in looking for an adventure bike or a Sportster, and all they did was try and tell them how they needed at LEAST a Road King with every piece of boomer chrome in the catalog. Most vowed to never step foot in an HD dealership ever again and ended up with KTM's or Yamahas.
Interestingly, that was not my own experience at Harley Davidson of San Marcos twenty years ago.
My previous bike had been a Nighthawk 250. Basically a Miata, but with half the wheels and half the pistons. Cheap, tiny, unsophisticated, and awesome.
If Honda had made a 500cc twin version of that bike in the early 2000s, with a slightly taller stance, I'd have bought one. But they didn't.
One of the bikes on my list was the Buell Blast, the 500cc thumper which I think was probably intended merely to replace the Rebel as the default MSF bike.
I'm 6'2" and weighed about 200 lbs back then.
Anyway, it wound up being way smaller than I'd thought, but aside from pointing that out, the salesgoon didn't try to upsell me after I pointed out that my last bike had been a CB250, and that'd I'd driven there today in a Miata. (For you young folks, the early 90's Miatas were actually small, unlike the current-gen land yachts.)
Anyway, I wound up buying a Suzuki SV650, and that was a great bike. It was the right fit for me, my riding style, and my needs.
Still, I miss that 'hawk...
One of these two bikes is a 1991 model, the other is a 2008. I challenge you to tell me which is which.
(I assume at least someone here knows which part changed between those years.)
Motorcycle design peaked right there, man. It's been downhill ever since.
That's crazy. I had a Honda CM400T in the early '80s in college. 396cc twin with a front disc brake. It was fast enough, and nimble. You might as well have had a scooter...
Interestingly, that was not my own experience at Harley Davidson of San Marcos twenty years ago.
Makes me wonder if your experience was an outlier, if its a regional thing, or if maybe they have changed their incentive/employee reward structures over the years such that it pushes them towards being *********.
Makes me wonder if your experience was an outlier, if its a regional thing, or if maybe they have changed their incentive/employee reward structures over the years such that it pushes them towards being *********.
I don't know.
It could be that I didn't look like someone who could afford an XB9R in 2004. Or it may be that San Diego people are inherently just less-douchy than the rest of the country. Living in that sort of paradise, where you can literally just walk into Mexico for fish tacos on the weekend, does tend to make a person more laid-back. Or maybe times have changed, and people are having a different experience today.
On a different note, wokeness knows no boundaries.
This is a 2021 opinion piece in The Spinoff, which is a New Zealand based tabloid blog site. You know how everyone here hates "The Mainstream Media," well, this is the alternative: https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/15-12...-haha-reaction
Every time I see that little yellow ball of derision sitting at the bottom of news stories and posts, cackling at the pandemic, climate change, inequality – actually anything where someone is trying to make the world a better place – my faith in humanity slips a little further.
While I’m training myself not to click on Facebook’s comments section – and that addictive rush of outrage of reading the horrendous views of strangers – the haha emoji is unavoidable. It takes just one person to click that avatar of vitriol and the post and my newsfeed is tainted forever. Even on stories where the comments are turned off, you’ll still find that little androgynous face of scorn.
My experience of social media is now like being followed everywhere by Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons – like every earnest view I hold is a source of belittlement for the world.
In a way it has become the emoji of the moment. The emoji of Brexit, Donald Trump and the anti-vaxxers. A weapon of the trolls in the time of the culture wars.
It's bizarre that they're not even trying to disguise the hate anymore. They literally use the word "cancel" right there in the title, in a non-ironic manner.
Being deeply offended by very trivial things has gone from a character flaw to a badge of honor.
I guess the stereotype about Aussies being made of tougher stuff than other Caucasian-descended nations does not extend across the Tasman Sea.
Meanwhile, here in soon-to-be-ex-Freedom-Land,
Enjoy your constitutionally-protected freedom of expression while you still can, everyone. It will be gone within our lifetimes.
Last edited by Joe Perez; Aug 22, 2024 at 11:18 AM.
I was thinking earlier about, well, a lot of things. But mostly the present-day state of affairs concerning conversation and communication between people of dissimilar backgrounds and alignments.
I've been "online" since the late 80s, back when it was BBSes and 2400 baud modems. The university elite had access to Usenet, but I wasn't old enough yet. We did have FidoNet, which was about as fast as the postal service at carrying messages across the country. Not joking.
A lot has changed since then, but a lot hasn't.
Like, computer ownership was hella-niche 35 years ago, but although the audience was much smaller, the demographics, surprisingly, were not that much different.
On the occasions when we'd have a BBS party, where everyone showed up at a restaurant or a park, we still had a pretty diverse cross-section of humanity, from pretty much any demographic measure you can imagine. Age, race, gender, orientation, it was amazingly heterogeneous.
Back in the late 80s, there were so few people online that there was no choice but for everyone to be in the same chatroom / MMORPG / etc. There simply were not enough people in total for there to be more than one or two different forums.
We have only had the "luxury" of segregating ourselves into echo-chambers of like-minded individuals within the past decade or so.
"I grew up in Christian education all through college. I don't remember any of my doctrinal classes mentioning only male and female, and that's the way it should be."
Hell, I'm an atheist and I know that's wrong. Here's a super quick search result:
Genesis 1:26 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 5:1-2 When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.
Deuteronomy 12:12 And there rejoice before the Lord your God—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites from your towns who have no allotment or inheritance of their own.
Mark 10:6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’
Leviticus 20:13 "‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
Saw this article today, in which they condemn Harley Davidson for "Bowing to bigots," and referring to their customers as "those human shitstains" and "a bunch of right-wing cretins" because Harley realized that trying to publicly push DEI when their core customer base is upper-middle-class, flag-waving, middle-aged white men, didn't work well.
That place used to be a legitimate automotive journalistic publication.
Companies are finally figuring out that trying to radically alter the moral and ethical standards of society is not a good business model. And some folks can't seem to tolerate that.
Who would have thought that Harley would cave?
Literally everyone who understands basic economics.
Sorry I'm late. But seems like you guys are as well, even Daily Mail picked up on this earlier in the month:
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