I've had 19 motorcycles in my riding career, so far. Three were built in England, one was assembled in the USA with a Jap motor, three were built in the USA, the rest were built in Japan. The thing I like about HD is the quality of the finishes, ready availability of parts, extensive knowledge on how to service, and general reliability. I hope Matt Levatich's leadership of Harley is successful - I hope they have a chance to compete for the next new motorcycle I buy. Its called Capitalism and its something the GOP like to lecture us all on four or five years ago. Ok, here is your chance to make it work.

 

This is one of the reasons the Japanese were able to get a foot in the door beyond mopeds and dominate two decades of motorcycle sales in the US. Then one thing happened that I believe really turned the tide for Harley-Davidson. It wasn't the AMF sale or the Reagan speech or the introduction of the Evo engine (All hail the Evo! God save the Evo! Long live the Evo! Long live MY Evo!) First, one sentence of personal history as a prelude. Japanese bikes were all I knew about growing up; I didn't know what a Harley-Davidson was until this event... Terminator 2: Judgment Day. That movie with Arnold riding the new Fat Boy is what changed HD's fortune for good and turned the Harley culture into what it has become (for better or worse, take your pick). No one has to agree, but I can't be swayed; this is what made Harley mainstream.

Personally, I don't think it does Harley or anyone else any good to keep making the engines larger, more complex, and more expensive. They keep getting bigger and uglier; to what end? The Evo is the sexiest of all the engines; long and slender, fitting the frame just right with a little room to spare and plenty of room to tweak lots of power out of it. The air cleaners (stock) keep getting bigger and uglier (from perfect circle Evo to oval TC to rhomboid M8 - barf; looks like the original Goldwing box). The displacement war ended years ago; stop already and do something creative already - like make smaller/cheaper/interesting bikes for a younger crowd. Oh, wait; they might be doing that already. I'm excited to see what the new bikes bring to the table. For HD to survive the future, they can't be an "old man's" bike anymore.

 

My '77 FXS was great. I owned that bike for 36 years and it never left me stranded by the side of the road. A lot of the problems with Harley's in the mid to late '70's were caused by sloppy castings and sabotage by disgruntled employees.

 

I had a '76 FXE that was a pretty good motorcycle overall, When I bought the '79 Low Rider I was gonna sell the '76, I wound up keeping it until 1986.
My '79 had flywheels that were balanced improperly from the factory, on the trip home from the dealership my mirrors vibrated so bad that the glass fell out of them, The dealer told me that "Harley's vibrate" and "It's normal".
It was so bad that by the time I had 1500 miles on the bike, the fuel tank mounts were cracking and I had broken 3 top motor mount brackets.
I gave up on the "warranty" and just split the cases, put in a set of S&S wheels, ported and polished the heads and built a 96" stroker motor for it.
The inner primary kept cracking at the top front mounting bolt as well, It turned out that the frames on quite a few of the late 70's bikes were assembled with very poor tolerances and the transmissions required a lot of shimming to relieve stress on the inner primary case in order to keep the inners from cracking.
Harley did send me a new set of gas tanks under warranty.
I kept the Low Rider until 1989 when I bought a new FXRS-SP, I had bought a 1984 FXR new and had all three bikes for a while but sold the '76 in 1988 to one of my brothers that was in need and then sold the '79 when I bought the '89.
The '76 had well over 100,000 miles in the clock when I sold it. (3 rebuilds)
The '79 had 96,000 miles on it when I sold it.(1 complete rebuild and 4 top ends)
The '84 had 175,000 miles on it when I sold it in 1998. (3 top ends)
The '89 was with me until 2009, it had 310,000 miles on it. (3 complete rebuilds)
Harley didn't really build a decent engine until they built the EVO and that motor turned the company around along with the FXR.

 

Mr. Levatich needs to stop saying , " Produced and made in America " Harley is under Federal Trade Commision ( FTC ) rules they are not allowed to state or having any signage on their Motorcycles that have the made in America emblem unless the products contains more than 50% US made parts . Mr. Levatich should be fined by the FTC for his made in American statement . If Harley's were truly made in the US and just not assembled from Asian junk parts that emblem would be proudly displayed on all their bikes . Now even the very wheels you are riding on are made in China since Harley closed down their Austrailian Cast Alloy plant to make their wheels using slave labor in Asia. Take your lies and golden parachute Mr. Levatich and go blow smoke up someone elses **** .

 

I believe they are over 60% domestic content.

 

The pansy ceo is simply covering his ***. The shareholders are antsy as they should be. Proof of this is the recent announcement of future upcoming models. With the exception of the livewire, new bikes were a closely guarded secret. While the blanket statement that the older generation is "dying off" may be true in some cases, it is a lazy and inaccurate view to justify the pathetic sales numbers of the almighty m8. While that motor is sumpin else, the fact is, a majority don't like that motor or the jap looking/feel the softail lineup is taking. Their focus of "inspiring new ridership" is laughable. Build bikes that people want to buy, gotta have, is the only solution. Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see the moco sold within 10 years or less. Would be damn funny if Polaris is the suitor.

 

uh, it'd be pretty easy to notice since the VIN (by law) encodes the country of final manufacture. if the VIN starts with 1, 4, or 5, it was built in America.

 

I'am keeping what I got a 2016 model and will never buy another Harley pseudo rice burner. At least I have the good Cast Alloy tire rims and not the scrap alloy China made rims that could crack like the auto rims a few years back that China was selling to the US car manufacteurs .

 

This is one of the reasons (I don't know the correct amount of American Parts) that I changed my tune from one of my first threads "open letter to Harley Davidson". That is when I thought there were just mistakes and a wrong direction being made with the engineer, development and marketing teams. My team that I was going to assemble would have changed 99.9% of this including pushing for ABS on every Harley Davidson or at a minimum most of them with a low cost option on the other motorcycles. I think if this CEO cares about all of the Harley Davidson riders (as he says) than in my opinion that would be a major step in motorcycle safety. A large number of Harley Davidson wrecks that I have witnessed and/or heard about had the rider locking the brakes up and sliding into the vehicle in front of them or into the oncoming traffic.

As I have said of late, even if you believe in the Harley CEO's battle with Trump several of us have made clear the facts are simple these factory changes (like the KC plant being closed) were made years ago, so unless the CEO's psychic reader told him years ago "that the Apprentice actor will become president and start a tariff war" he is just FOS. As I asked earlier if you believe this CEO than please explain other than saving his own azz what benefit is there for Harley Davidson to have this CEO in the media non-stop throwing Trump under the bus "as the reason for Harley Davidsons recent actions"?

I said in a earlier post that my 110 engine in my Low Rider S was the perfect size bigger engine because if you keep making them larger you hurt some of stability and looks of the mid sized motorcycles. You can add more horsepower by advancements in the engine without having to just go bigger forever. It is like the 520 ci. big block in the Cobra, you can put a Roush 427ci. 650 horsepower small block engine in it and because of the lighter weight the car will be better in the corners on the track. I picked the 520 ci. big block because it is a pro stock engine where my design was for faster 1/4 mile times and top speed (no different than my Hayabusa being a bigger bike with a larger engine for top speed compared to a smaller bike like the GSXR 1000 being better in the corner for track racing).