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Not painting a pretty future

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tshelfer said:
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That was certainly true with automobile manufacturing. The very first gas scare in '73 put in motion a US trend that has continued to grow - smaller, more efficient cars. The Beetle, the Datsun 510, the BMW 2002, and the Toyota Corona revolutionized how America saw cars. Over time, the Japanese and Europeans got very good at building compact but roomy small-engined cars, while tailoring them to American tastes. Detroit brought us junk like Pintos and Vegas - underpowered, cramped, poorly built - their main strong suit was that you didn't have to dispose of them because they obligingly caught on fire and consumed themselves.

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Actually, the European and Japanese manufacturers got no better at tailoring to American tastes. The Pinto and Vega were introduced in 1971 as 1972 models, before the crisis. European makers shared a variety of quality levels, just as they do now. Some good, some bad, some getting better, some getting worse. Volkswagen Type 1 was the best all around of all the compact and subcompact cars. After all, it is the longest running single automotive platform in constant production in world history, about 65 years if memory serves. More Type 1s were built than any other single automotive platform, ever. They were no poorer quality than the oriental crap at the time, better quality than most anything built in the U. S. of A.

1950s, Statistical Process Control (SPC), invented and developed in the U. S. of A. between 1924 and the American military occupation of Japan, was introduced to the Japanese since American manufacturers had good profit margins and really didn't care about quality. It took a while, but eventually the Japanese smeared just about all their industries with SPC as a means of reducing material usage by limiting quality problems (Japan is a natural resource challenged nation), and SPC deserves the credit for the improvements in Japanese products ever since. The more complex a product, the longer it took SPC to build quality. SPC is the only reason for the improvement in quality of Japanese motorcycles in the '60s, automobiles in the '70s. It is still common practice in Japan. It works.

The 1973 gas crisis led to American automaker bailout laws on limits on the quantities of imports each foreign entity could sell in the U. S. of A. Since no small cars would be sitting on dealers' lots, dealers started fitting every high-dollar option they could get away with, factory or dealer installed. If you could only sell 50 cars a year, would you prefer to average $300 profit or $3000 on each? Think about it.

Americans were pretty stupid about fuel efficiency claims, too. One or two year-old luxobarges were selling for 1/3 the price of new subcompacts. It was almost impossible to buy a used subcompact, but if you could, it probably cost more used than it did new. The $4000 difference in costs to purchase was good for 48,000 miles in a luxobarge, 80,000 miles in a subcompact.

Junkyards were full of luxobarges and dealers had shelves covered in parts--some imports had to have oil filters special ordered. A rebuilt Quadrajet cost about $90, a replacement Japanese carb cost about $300. Maintenance and repairs on small cars cost 4-5 times as much as similar work on luxobarges. Body parts were similarly rare and overpriced. Oil and filter changes 4 times a year cost $60 for luxobarges, and some subcompacts the oil filters alone cost that much. Toss in an annual air filter, PCV valve, fast wearing mini tires, and spark plugs, and maintenance costs ate a forth of the 32,000 mile fuels savings. That's if nothing needed repaired. A couple repairs, clutches and brakes were notoriously failures on subcompacts back then, and your fuel savings are gone, if you could get the parts to repair the car and be driving in less than 3 months.

Therefore, full coverage insurance on small cars cost 4-5 times what full coverage insurance cost for a luxobarge. Most people didn't full coverage luxobarges. They were cheap, nobody stole them, and parts were easy to get, subcompacts were completely opposite.

For most people the difference in maintenance, repairs, and insurance costs more than made up for the increased cost of fuel of luxobarges. So, for the same money, most people could drive a luxobarge or a subcompact for 4 years, take your pick. Then the subcompact would be a worn out rustbucket and the luxobarge would be happy to go another 4 or 8 years.

The small car craze was all about fitting in, there really was no money to be saved when they first hit the U. S. of A. market.

Of course, by the late '70s, Japanese expertise with SPC changed everything. The rest of your post is spot on.
 
DancesWithCurves said:
H-D will never go away completely. Worst-case they evolve their lifestyle brand into a clothing company that bankrolls a small motorcycle sideline.
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I've been buying HOG stock since the late 90s. While they are certainly off their high, as long as folks keep buying chome doo-dads, t-shirts, bandannas, vests, doo-rags, and anything else emblazoned with the H-D logo, I'll keep buying the stock.
:trust:
 
I saw a big, tough looking trucker wearing a Lion King shirt today. Might want to buy in to that, too.
 
Meriden said:
Here is an interesting bit on what percentage of the households in each country owns a car, a motorcycle and a bicycle. It's a couple of years old, but it likely hasn't changed much.

The US is 88% cars, 15% motorcycles and 53% bicycles.
In contrast Italy is 89% cars, 26% motorcycles and 63% bicycles.

Might guess that in countries like Egypt - which is 20% cars, 28% motorcycles and 18% bicycles - that people own one or the other but not both.

m
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I'd like to see the statistics on how much each gets used in each country too. I guarantee you that many of those motor and bicycles rarely get of of the garage in the US. I'd also bet that most of the use they see here is recreational rather than basic transportation as they are in many other countries.
 
I think you are redefining Meridian's point, you are both correct. Americans have cars and toys. Many foreigners wish they could be in our shoes, which is why so many millions are here.
 
SL350 said:
I wonder if needing the safety course to get licensed negatively impacts new riders? That you need the time and money before your first ride might be discouraging. But I won't let a newbie ride even my little ct90 on the road without a license and that means the safety course now.
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As German I look at a 2 day course for $200 as both cheap and quite short. The gear is gonna cost more.

Wife being afraid of American car and truck drivers asked me not to get a bike and for the past twenty years I was ok with it. That was my deterrent. (She rode with me in Germany, so the motorcycle itself wasn't it.)

When she told me to get a motorcycle instead of a new car though, it was like https://youtu.be/kPgPrtOxvK4

One of our machinists has a little Harley, he's 25? New riders will come, although he, like the other two Harley guys at work are Mexican, which I guess validates the other post?

Personally I think it's people/society looking at Motorcycles as only being a weekend or hobby thing.
The daily commute on a motorcycle doesn't compute for most people (anymore?)
And as just a hobby, motorcycles would look like an expensive hobby. (Some surely are, just don't have to be all they are)



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Most Americans wouldn't even consider a motorcycle as their only transportation. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy, too exposed to the stupidity of others, too limited cargo capacity, too limited passenger capacity, ..., and it goes on and on. Generally, most Americans are just wussies.

On the other hand, some of us have a half dozen collector cars and trucks with no insurance or current registration, lend our only licensed cage to someone in need, and prefer riding a motorcycle on snow and ice to driving a cage in sunshine. Even many 1%ers have alternative transportation. You never know!
 
I did ride my ct90 and SL350 for almost 6 months when I loaned my truck to my daughter when a tree fell on her Tundra. But I could borrow my wife's car when I needed and that was rare.

Sometimes it meant waiting for rush hour to pass but mostly it was Saturday mornings I feared most. Moms in vans in big hurries to cart kids to sports events were most dangerous to me.

It saved a ton of money and gas but these old bikes are fully depreciated and I do all the work myself. $100 insurance per year for 3 and 100 mpg really helps. So does two tires and tubes for $80.

We all remember the huge upswing in bikes when gas was near $4. Maybe that is the ticket as others mention the Brits and Asian nations where petrol costs are life threatening.
 
KenH said:
I saw a big, tough looking trucker wearing a Lion King shirt today. Might want to buy in to that, too.
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I hope that your critique of Texas T was tongue in cheek because HD was worth 80 million dollars in 1981 and is now worth over 10 billion dollars. If an investor wasn't buying stock in HD for the last 35 years, the investor was probably losing money. It would be hard to find companies that have done better. They accomplished that by lawsuit and change. It's probably time for more change, but the prediction of the demise of HD is way premature.
 
Agree but HD was one of the bailout companies so market timing is everything.
 
humanrace said:
I hope that your critique of Texas T was tongue in cheek because HD was worth 80 million dollars in 1981 and is now worth over 10 billion dollars. If an investor wasn't buying stock in HD for the last 35 years, the investor was probably losing money. It would be hard to find companies that have done better. They accomplished that by lawsuit and change. It's probably time for more change, but the prediction of the demise of HD is way premature.
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Since your sense of humor seems to be broken I would be happy to send you a glass belly button so you can see out. It might help you feel better spying on the rest of us without having to leave your "safe room".

I agree that HD will be around a long time, in one form or another. After all, their most profitable product is this, and there are plenty of people with little or no sense of self worth who bought new HDs over the years. I think when millennials realize the potential they've wasted with their smart phone addictions, HD will have a massive new market with Gramma's money. That's been a common repeating pattern in America since the poorly parented beatniks of 70 years ago.

However, with the denigration of the middle class in recent years, I expect it is just a matter of time before the "proletarians" (quoted because American "proletarians" draw welfare and deal drugs and commit other crimes for profit instead of work) set upon the bourgeoisie when the nomenklatura commands. Oh, wait didn't Soros already fund a private army to attack conservatives about a year ago? There ya go!

I don't make this stuff up. Pursue a little knowledge yourself, you'll see.

EDIT: I have old and dear friends in Milwaukie. I've wandered with them through parts of some of the facilities most people are forbidden to enter. Lots of hardworking people working on things most couldn't even imagine, much less believe. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop picking on them, since several of them picked up my Chinese motorcycle and set it atop a garbage can in the parking lot. Rigged a hip harness out of a couple tiedown straps, set my bike back down by myself, then told the HD snickerers they couldn't do that with a HD, so obviously, my bike needs a 1000 watt sound system with waterproof speakers and an .mp3 of an unmuffled HD going by. Then I just had to rub in the fact that HD suspensions and brakes come from the same building my Chinese piece of patty did. It goes round and round, join the fun!
 
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My sense of humor is working just fine. However, it's hard to hear tone or nuance in the written language and that's the reason I asked. Politely, I might add.

I do agree that Harley's biggest product is a sense of belonging. We all want to be a part of some tribe. Look at us, we're on TWT. That being said, Harley has accomplished their goal of attracting members to the congregation with a much better success rate than other manufacturers. An example: An acquaintance had a medical problem that had a cure rate of less than 20% using approved medical procedures. His insurance would pay. An experimental procedure, in the early stages of development, had a cure rate of 85%. Insurance would not pay. His Harley buddies held a fundraiser and they raised $2000 more than the cost, some of it from people he had never met.

If I got all my Yamaha riding buddies together for a fund raiser, they would want to know why they had to pay for a BBQ sandwich when I invited them to the party.

Harley will survive. I go to a lot of MSF classes. Ask the students what bike they want and half or more will say Harley. They might not buy a Harley because of price, but they want one and may eventually get one. I have never had a student say they wanted a Ducati. If it's not a Harley, it's usually a cruiser, sport bike or dual sport with brand not being mentioned.
 
Rocky Bill said:
To the point..http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/18/investing/harley-davidson/index.html
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Saw that on Reuters Business earlier today. Thought the link on this one about the tariff was ironic since we're threatening putting a 100% carousel on about much of KTM's line up because of feedlot hamburger.

HD is a big chunk of the American market, but I wouldn't notice if they went away because of lack of interest from the Millennials. I just don't go where most HD riders are and they definitely don't ride where I do. What I would miss with a lower ridership in the states is development of new dual sports, dirt bikes, sport-tourers and adv bikes. C'est la vie. It's not the first time one generation's pass time was forgotten by the next.

m
 
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Okay, I have to step back from that just a little. I do have a couple of friends with Harleys and we ride from time to time, but mostly we are riding our dual sports. We'll hit the streets with our road bikes on rare occasions.
 
humanrace said:
My sense of humor is working just fine. However, it's hard to hear tone or nuance in the written language and that's the reason I asked. Politely, I might add.

I do agree that Harley's biggest product is a sense of belonging. We all want to be a part of some tribe. Look at us, we're on TWT. That being said, Harley has accomplished their goal of attracting members to the congregation with a much better success rate than other manufacturers. An example: An acquaintance had a medical problem that had a cure rate of less than 20% using approved medical procedures. His insurance would pay. An experimental procedure, in the early stages of development, had a cure rate of 85%. Insurance would not pay. His Harley buddies held a fundraiser and they raised $2000 more than the cost, some of it from people he had never met.

If I got all my Yamaha riding buddies together for a fund raiser, they would want to know why they had to pay for a BBQ sandwich when I invited them to the party.

Harley will survive. I go to a lot of MSF classes. Ask the students what bike they want and half or more will say Harley. They might not buy a Harley because of price, but they want one and may eventually get one. I have never had a student say they wanted a Ducati. If it's not a Harley, it's usually a cruiser, sport bike or dual sport with brand not being mentioned.
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I prefer to ride alone. Most people who ride where I like to go A) don't know how to select an appropriate bike for the terrain to be covered, B) don't know how to set up a bike up for the terrain to be covered, C) don't know how to ride very well on the terrain to be covered even though they have been "riding for 20 years and former semi-pro MX racer", or D) a combination of some or all the above.

They few with whom I ride regularly usually ride alone, too. They don't screw up my riding day with crashed or disassembled motorcycles or broken bones.
 
Hope it goes well for HD, but I think they are screwed one way or another. Government needs to prosecute those who run them on the street, not HD.
 
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