Decline in Motorcyle sales
 

Don't how to link to news article, but hope you can read this. If these morons would get up off of the MSRPor higher price, they would sell bikes.


http://www.delawareonline.com/articl...torcycle+sales

You would think that with a bad economy people would be buying more bikes to save money on gas and operating costs.

:icon_lolsign: The article was ok, but the responses were funny, funny, funny. Kinda reminds me of here sometime, the internet forum argument you can never win. When you refer to morons are you referring to HD or motorcycle sales in general? The reasonI ask is because HD is still getting MSRP for the most part, although they are dealing, but we're still giving it to them, so who is the real moron?

I fail to see how spending $15-25k,without interest,plus insurance is going to save money. Especialy if you don't sell your car.

That is one heck of a lot of gas.

"We don't have clunkers," Bennett said. "Seriously, you get a Harley-Davidson, and [when] it's 12, 15 years old, it's worth more than when it was new."

This guy must have been in a coma for the last ten years.

Gas is cheap right now compaired to last year. $2.25 here.

Harley could stimulate short term sales by offering a discount. Many dealer programs have the effect of doing just that. However, Harley is well aware of the pit the Jap brands have gotten themselves in by discounting, and are unwilling to destroy their own brand by doing the same thing.

If HD was to go the route of the Japs by deeply discounting new models, what would that do to existing used bike prices? I doubt that HD keeps new prices high exclusively to protect existing owners, but rather to protect their brand which has a tradition of high resale.

A buyer can get just abut any Jap bike they want at invoice or lower. Harley is still a premium product that can still mostly command "list" price. Harley has taken the smarter long-term route by tightening it's belt during the recession rather than having a fire sale.

HD motorcyle dealers, and you are right, we are the morons for paying MSRP, but the story was about the decline in MC sales and dealers concern about it. So if you want to sell MCs come down off of that MSRP.

As long as H-D dealers continue to sell nearly all their stock at MSRP, why would they discount?

Some dealers are experiencing a drop in sales, true, but most H-D dealers are able to stay in business without dropping sales price. In business, thats the whole point.

Greetings,

It's all based on supply and demand. The last couple of years Harley had more supply than demand, so this year they've scaled back the number of bikes they are producing. From what is going on around here, there's very few 2010's to be found and the few that do make it to the dealership, they get sold rather quickly. For what they are sold for, I don't know. I paid MSRP but didn't pay setup/freight or any other charges for mine along with a discount on parts and labor.