Electric motorcycles, also known as e-motorcycles, are becoming increasingly popular as consumers and manufacturers alike recognize the benefits of electric propulsion. One of the main advantages of e-motorcycles is their environmental friendliness. Electric motors produce zero emissions, making them a cleaner alternative to traditional gasoline-powered motorcycles. Additionally, e-motorcycles are often quieter than their gas-powered counterparts, […]
Those of ya’ll who’ve been reading us for a long time know how I feel about Harley’s LiveWire bike… It’s not traditional It’s not a V-twin It’s shockingly “un-Harley” It’s expensive for an electric I’ve said over and over that, on the one hand, it’s a 180 degree turn from what made Milwaukee great, but […]
An interesting piece of news came out of Milwaukee a few weeks ago, and like so many things “Harley” there are several ways to take it. Harley-Davidson Inc.’s top executive Jochen Zeitz said the company will “repurpose” its historic 500,000-square-foot headquarters on Milwaukee’s west side later this year. The CEO didn’t provide any further details, […]
Okay, first things first – this is a review of a marketing plan, not a real product (at least not yet). It’s also a question of what is going on in Milwaukee. On February 22, 2021, Harley plans to unveil its new Pan America bike. On the H-D site, they’ve got beautiful pictures, Jason Momoa […]
For years now, we’ve watched as Harley-Davidson has wrestled with the average age of its riders. The most recent statistics say the same things they’ve said all along: The average age of Harley’s customers is getting older – over 50 now, to be exact. And that’s a problem. A big one, in fact. Harley […]
Let me go ahead and warn you: I’m not going to talk about COVID-19. Or civil unrest in our cities and towns. Or the silliness of Americans thinking about “defunding” police departments. If you want any of that, turn on the news or check out social media – the “experts” will tell you exactly what […]
I’ll be the first one to get in line for all this crap to end. Seriously. Despite that, and despite an old lady who has seriously curtailed a lot of the fun stuff we’d normally be doing this time of year, I guess the good news is the weather’s been pretty good in this part […]
Well, here we are again! The holidays are bearing down on us, it’s cold, riding your bike if you live nearly anywhere north of Kentucky is a frostbite-inducing adventure … …And your old lady wants to decorate the house. We get it, you’ve been busy. That was the entire point of creating “MNYCU” as a […]
Okay, so here’s the deal, readers: Since most of the fine, upstanding citizens of North America think everyone on a bike is the same, most news agencies happily put the crotch-rocket story beside the Poker Run for Leukemia story and collectively brand us all under the same flag. We’re going to try a little something […]
The motorcycle marketplace is a conundrum. With so many specialized bikes on showroom floors, it is strange how vaguely homogenized the market seems. Tourers, ADVs, dual sports, standards – they’re all so alike. That’s where the classic café racer stands alone. It is a glimmer of individuality in a world of increasing sameness. Café racers […]
Undoubtedly, some of you saw the news this last week that Harley-Davidson is hiring interns. Nothing new there – internship has been a part of big business for decades, but Harley is actually doing something – something that may be the smartest thing to come out of Milwaukee in a long time. They’re going to […]
Harley Davidson made its bones by exporting America. For decades, they’ve sold the idea of the freedom of the open road and the unforgettable sound of an angry V-twin. To me, then, it’s more than a little ironic that so much of Harley Davidson’s plans depend on global expansion amid the current United States’ government […]
About four years ago, Harley Davidson took a trip around the United States with a few bikes. Electric bikes. The project at the time was dubbed Livewire and in the last couple of months, Harley has actually greenlighted the development of a true electric bike. Now, I remember that tour and while there was a […]
So you’ve made the decision, and you want to go it alone. You’re going to open up your own motorcycle business. Well, good luck and we all hope it goes well…. at this point everyone you know leaves you to get on with it. Well, how about one final check to ensure you’ve got everything […]
Anybody who has been involved with riding for any length of time knows a little of the history of bikes in North America. Harley, Indian, the myriad of Japanese bikes starting in the 1970s, and then, assorted European and British bikes that appeared after World War 2. A few days ago, I was at a […]
Entire generations of riders have sworn by air-cooled engines and Harley took a whole ration of wrath when they decided to introduce liquid cooling into the Twin Cam 103 a few years ago. Mother Davidson was far from the first – in reality – they were one of the last – but is there an […]
For a lot of the reasons we’ve talked about in these pages over the years, Harley has its challenges. An aging ridership, changing manufacturing, and a question of direction versus tradition. None of those answers are easy and the questions aren’t going away. Harley, though, has taken it all in stride and, at a time […]
Just kidding. In a way, it’s true, though. Harley Davidson and Indian may not be officially working with one another, but it is interesting that they have both recently come out as looking for “sleepers.” These are the 9 million or so licensed riders in North America that don’t own a bike and have the […]
One of the side effects of being an independent and a guy who has owned the same bike for two decades is that every once in awhile, you finally get around to noticing something. These days, if you’re like me, you might see something that you like and make a mental note to look more […]
A couple of weeks ago, Harley Davidson released their first quarter financial results and, as usual, it makes for some interesting reading. Now, we’ve talked about profit centers in this column before, but what was really interesting isn’t that profits stayed virtually the same for H-D versus the first quarter last year, but that they […]
A million years ago, when my Uncle Jack sold cars in Atlanta, he would always joke around about the selling of cars in the early days of NASCAR – “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” and by the time I came along, NASCAR had turned into a commercial sport and I pretty much quit watching […]
One of the things that I always enjoy as a holdover from my years in an office is reading financials. I certainly don’t have a portfolio worth bragging about (the old lady does, though), but trying to read between the lines is always fun. As a writer, I also like to read the “spin” that […]
Every once in a while, you get surprised. That may not happen as often as it used to for a lot of us, but I was unpleasantly surprised when I opened up the paper the other day to find that Polaris was shutting down operations of its Victory motorcycle line “effective immediately.” THAT one kinda […]
Well, well, well. Here we are at the end of the motorcycle drag racing year and as usual, Harley was in the hunt. Specifically, Andrew Hines and Ed Krawiec were in the hunt with the bikes that Mother Davidson has helped them to ride to victory again this year. Personally, I’m convinced that you could […]
Alright, far from just picking on the corporate talking heads at Harley-Davidson, I figured I’d pick on a few of the other big companies that build big cruisers overseas. I’m not talking about small shops that are just really just one-offs of Harley and their overall production and market saturation is really dependent on Harley […]
Now, I’ve been called a lot of things over the years, most of them unpleasant. More than a few times, depending on what exactly it was that I said, people have told me that I’m biased, ignorant, and some more colorful things that you can’t repeat in polite company. A few folks have, from time […]
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about the new Harley Milwaukee Eight engine and how it was a “clean sheet” engine that Mother Davidson was going to be rolling out in their big bikes in 2017. It’s not without a little irony that on the heels of that announcement, Harley casually dropped the news […]
Earlier this week we talked about the new engines that Harley-Davidson will be dropping into their touring bikes and a few CVO chassis’, and with the unrest in Milwaukee over the police, another, quieter story came slipping out. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, one of those pesky watchdog groups that seem to stir up […]
