chicago harley in glenview ain't going anywhere GUARANTEED, you need a hew insider.

 

Funny that I was reading about dealerships that have closed and 2 of them that "were not going anywhere" have closed or sold, both in the Chicagoland area.
Chicago H-D & Conrad's both sold

 

Buying 7 new bikes in my lifetime wasn't enough?

One big problem for dealerships is that they have no pricing power. Customers tend to come in to check out the bikes, take a test ride, pump the sales people for information and service department too.

They they price shop all around town and the internet. What ever shop comes up the cheapest gets the sale. Great for Harley who sells the same number of bikes, but how in the heck can the dealership stay in business if his profit is cut to the bone.

You guys can be brutal : >) (me too, sometimes)

 

GM, Chrysler & Ford did the same thing a few years back. Only wanted so many dealers in a area. Closed a lot of long time small dealers. Ford pulled the plug on the first dealer to sell Shelbys back in the '60s, a large multi line dealer had a deal to buy it, remodel and keep it open. Ford allowed two dealers on each side of it to buy and close it. Put a lot folks out of work.

 

It may be a bargain but most of "the rest of the world" doesn't have the natural energy resources or refineries that we are fortunate enough to have here in America. Too bad the current knuckleheads in charge won't tap into the supply.

 

I have to agree 100% with your statements. I've owned four Harley's since 2002 and my '10 Ultra seems to have had way more than it's share of problems, considerably more problems than the total of all the issues on the first three bikes combined. So part of the above equation has to take into account that while I may keep my Harley for many more years to come, there will never be a fifth check made out to my local Harley dealer. I've spent more than $100k with Harley since 2002 and I just spent half a day pissing my time away, trying to fix a transmission seal leak because the bottom two bolts weren't properly torqued. Not a big deal, except it's almost impossible to properly torque them down without removing the entire exhaust to get access to them. People who spend half as much for their Hyundai or Kia cars as we do on our Harley's get better reliability and service.

 

Yeah I know what you mean... sign of the times.

 

Haha Lean manufacturing.If you work for a manufacturer who is going through this ,Bail now!I worked for a company that was around 150 years old that started this.They spent millions on this crap.The mother co.finally shut it down citing cost of operating in USA.We workers claim lean stood for:Less employees are needed.