Been out-of-touch that way for quite awhile. Green Day, Bud Light, Livewire, and so on...

 

Yep you heard it here on HDForums first. Harley Davidson will be out of business by April 2024, or bought by someone like Toyota or Elon Musk. Shoe Boy screwed up the company. My 2020 Fat Bob will be worth $50K in two years when Harley is no longer!

Say what you will about Shoe Boy (and I'm no Shoe Boy Fanboy), but he was put in charge in March 2020 just before the worst downturn since the 1929 and 2008 crash. (Both of which Harley survived).
He and Harley management kept the company alive during probably the worst consumer buying and supply chain constraint era since WWII.

I always find those GDP numbers interesting. Who vets them? Always good numbers when your candidate is up for re-election next year.

Harley is down just like all big ticket items including housing (in most areas). We American's love our loans and buying crap we can't afford, but will do so if the payments are low enough. Once interest rates went over 8% AND people could make 5% just keeping their money in the bank, big ticket purchases slowed down.

The company I work for Stock Price has sunk 59% in 12 months even though are sales grow ~20% year of year.

 

As @ChrisHo showed, Touring bike sales are only marginally better, Sportsters (new model) are not selling as well as the old ones (because it is much more expensive while the old version was already overpriced, among other things), and the Pan America is accumulating dust at showrooms.
I am surprised that the Softail platform numbers remain good and gaining over last year, but I suspect this is only because of relief on capacity/supply chain constrains and they are now building more Softail bikes (which are selling...).

 

Keep making ugly *** clothing lines and selling bikes for over $50k and hiring service techs that are better suited for oil changes only and then charging Master tech rates. That will help your bottom line.

Very sad to be honest. I hope the Moco can hang in there for the long haul.

 

A friend who works in Motorclothes at Corporate, has a boss that is gayer than a bag of dicks.

 

1950 called to say you owe them $0.27 cents for using that tag line from their era.

 

Gee, killing off the most popular and affordable entry level models, draconian control tactics with dealers, heavy price gouging and limiting numbers on what models are available couldn't possibly have any bearing on dropping sales now could they ?

 

Its not just a Harley issue. From Mercedes to Ford to Whirlpool, sales of big ticket items are being hit exactly as the Fed wants it to cool off demand hence lower inflation. I do believe Zeitz is misguided in pushing pricier bikes at lower volumes, he cites a 25% growth in cvo sales to justify his strategy. If it wasn't for the profit generated by HDFS, the earnings would have been way worse.
The era of free money is over, the last 10-15 years were an aberration that probably will never happen again in our lifetimes. The financial crisis at the end of the Bush term was pretty close to sending the US economy into a depression type spiral not seen since the 30's. The only way to keep the ship afloat was to cut interest rates to zero for a decade. Then covid happened and the economy shut down for over 15 months due to federal and local mismanagement of the pandemic response coupled with an uncommon lack of goods due to supply chains freezing up causing GDP to fall and inflation to rise.
Here is a look at mortgage rates thru the last few decades:Decade

Mortgage rate near the beginning of the decade Mortgage rate at the end of the decade

1970s

7.33% 12.9%

1980s

12.9% 9.78%

1990s

9.83% 8.06%

2000s

8.15% 5.14%

2010s

5.09% 3.74%

2020s

3.72% 8.0%

 

I did my part and bought a 2023 Low Rider ST in August.

I am on the HD Riders Market Research Group and pushing at every opportunity to get back to basics

 

and creating every dealership a monopoly.