How come the "stealers" don't haggle about price? In the past 2 months I have hit every HD shop within 300 miles looking at the EG classic. The price ranged from MSRP to over $19000. ???? They just look at you like you lost your mind and the white coat guys brought you. I mean this is a basic touring bike. No financing or trade ins,just me and my checkbook. One salesman said that is the way it is. lol. so much for my business going to a dealer in Birmingham,AL. grrrrrrrrrrrr just venting. [:@]

 

I guess they know we will buy the bike anyhow so they don't feel they have to discount it.

 

First, welcome to the forum. You'll find tons of good info here. As to the pricing of a Harley, there aren't many dealers in the U.S. that deal much on the price of the bike. That doesn't mean you can't negotiate. See who'll give you the best deal on parts, service & labor. For example, some will give 20% off of parts with free labor at the time of purchase. And/or free service for the first year. You get the idea. You might not get the $$ off the bike, but, you can still save some of you hard earned money.

Chris

 

I know this wont help you now, but if you wait until the new models hit the showroom floor, (August 1st), and can settle for a left over, discounts abound..... I got lucky and saved $2400.00 instantly. I also got a deal with some discounts/free labor at the time of the sale. Look below. I love everything about my bike. It would have been my choice even if I'd had to spend full price! Good luck

 

What Chris said - I shopped half-a-dozen dealers. It may sound stupid but I kept a spread sheet on what I could get out of each dealer - Parts discounts and length of time for discounts, Service cost, clothing discounts. Then I took that information into my prefered dealer - Ask him for his best deal - then showed him what I could get elsewhere and what could he do. He came pretty close to the best deal.

They can sell as many bikes as they can get their hands on at MSRP.

Have fun with it - I did.

 

Very simple.They dont have to. Why do you think every car dealer will and all have family and employee pricing etc? Because they have to. Supply and demand. Harley still cant build enough to equal demand(although gap is closing) so the price is high because the public demands it and the supply is short. Afew years ago you could not find hardly any dealer to sell at MSRP.Now they routinely do. And if you are adding warranty, accessories motorclothes etc then you can usually definitely dicker on prices. Theres lots of ways the dealers keep prices high. set up fees are usually at least 150 bucks and dealer doc fees can be as high as 500. all just for more profit.In fact harley pays all dealers 120 bucks to set up a bike. Most experienced techs can do it in under an hour. Take homage in the fact that your bike because of this is always worth more at sell time. for example, I hada loaded 2000 ultra that I sold in june o4 for 25k. I sold aperfectly good 99 mercedes last monthh that cost way over twice the harley for 15.5k. GO FIGURE!!

 

I have never talked to a dealer that would deal on a current model. They will sometimes deal on one that they have been looking at for awhile. The local guys had a yellow RG that they had for 90 days (don't know why) that they would come down on a little. As in the other posts they are much more flexible on motorclothes, maintenance and parts. They don't deal on the MSRP because they don't have to. We buy them anyway, we did that.[:@]

 

http://www.appletonharley.com/

I bought my 05 FLHRI Road King at MSRP at Appletons in Clarksville TN last March. I called them up over the phone and did the deal. They did not add on any extra fees or bump up the doc fee to $1,000. The pricing was straight from the Harley web site. They were real easy to deal with. I am from Huntsville AL and looked at 8 to 9 dealers. I would use them again. The sales rep I dealt with was Keith. I purchased an Invoice on the bike for $25 from the internet. The markup is 18%.

 

This winter is going to be a season of testing for HD dealers. When I started riding Harleys in the 70s, most dealers were starving and had to resort to carrying multiple brands to stay alive. Bleustein and his boys did a brave and masterful job of taking HD from a mess to a highly desired product. They drove marginal dealers out of business by creating expensive and restrictive franchise requirements (e.g. HD only, minimum showroom size, etc). They also did a good job of keeping capacity behind demand, and the artifically long waits to get a bike kept pricing high. Both HD and the dealers profited handsomely in the 90s with this strategy. And many of the dealers developed a lifestyle based on the assumption that they would continue to get premium prices and reasonable volume.

Meanwhile, Bleustein and the boys were hatching their grand plan. They built everything around the run-up to the Centennial year. Why, for example, did HD franchise hundreds of new dealers around the country if they could already sell every bike they could build? A dealer once said to me that he couldn't understand why HD let a new dealership get built nearby when he could probably sell twice as many bikes if he could get them.

But that was part of the plan. Bleustein and his boys were ready to retire, and therefore wanted to maximize the value of their stock options before retiring. The best way to do that is produce higher than expected results. The key is remembering that HD records a sale when they sell a bike to the DEALER. So what did they do? They franchised a bunch of new dealers, then FORCED those dealers in the past year or two(through their franchise agreements) to take inventory that they didn't want (since 2003, the demand for bikes has really dropped). HD recorded big sales, the stock market loved it, and Bleustein and the boy cashed out.

But the stock market folks aren't dumb. They quickly realized that they got fooled, and in one day the stock dropped from $60 to $50. Many people lost a lot of money, and it didn't take long for the lawyers to show up and start filing class action suits against Bleustein and company for stock manipulation. Those lawsuits are still out there, waiting to be settled or tried.

Back to the dealers: All the dealers I know have have inventory everywhere. I went into one, and while just looking over a couple of bikes, was told by a salesman that if I didn't like what was one the floor, they had a warehouse full out back. This dealer understands that if they don't move their inventory, the taxes and financing is going to kill them. Another dealer, who once had a window into the service/prep area, recently installed blinds and a barrier to the service area -- because they have bikes in crates stacked to the ceiling and don't want anyone to know. One of their salesmen is a good friend, and he just quit because he said no one was buying. Four years ago, his job was primarily to choose who was lucky enough to get a bike when one came in. This dealer once told me that his greatest fear was that the supply/demand balance would shift, and he'd have to start discounting. It would mean a lifestyle change for his whole family (who fill every key management role), and that terrified him.

All that is to say that the tables have turned on HD and the dealers. They would very much like you to believe that supply is constrained and they don't have to deal on price. It just isn't true. I'd love to be a buyer right now. A consequence of this being a buyers' market is that I have to sell my bike to get a new one, and its value is also diminished in this market. Just try to trade a bike and see what kind of offer you get. At least one of the dealers around here won't even deal with a trade. Five years ago that same dealer would not sell you a bike without a trade-in, because it guaranteed them another bike to sell at a profit. Today they know it would just be another bike sitting in inventory.

An im

 

What a great post by PLHOH and he is dead on with his insight and info. Based upon my research and contact base I have confirmed serveral of his conclusions.

Now is the time to buy since the dealers are stocked up and they want to get them off thier books and into your hands. I got 2k off of MSRP from my local dealer. I shopped the deal hard and most dealers would not deal that agressively. Funny as they all bark about how many bikes they have in stock and most of them you dont even see since they are in storage. The US Ecomony is changing and not everyone is out there ready and willing to spend 20-25k on a new toy.

Just my Thouhts

MPP