At the risk of over generalizing; I sometimes wonder why so many Hog riders seem to have such a seething and pathological hatred for "Jap-crap" bikes yet rarely do you hear them deriding BMW's and Ducati's.
Well, that's easy. HD was nearly put out of business by the Japanese bikes, not the Bmers or Ducs.
Cheers,
Ya know... that thought never occurred to me; do you think that's been a motivating factor with the owners versus the manufacturers?
Other governments, such as Japan, subsidize certain industries to allow them to grow and be profitable long term (good for local economy). They did this successfully in the 80s with the memory chip market, allowing manufacturers to dump cheap memory chips into the market place at below cost that American manufacturers couldn't hope to compete (having no alternate source of income other than sales of product). American memory chip manufacturers went out of business, leaving the Japanese manufacturers the only source. Then they could set their own prices for quite high profitability, since they now had the market cornered. Memory prices went up at least 4 fold, after the competition was eliminated and their competing production facilities were dismantled.
The import restrictions on Japanese motorcycles mostly prevented the Japanese from cornering the Motorcycle market, and kept HD making motorcycles, till they could make a more attractive product for their own survival.
HD was the last American motorcycle producer. I've no doubt that WWII created a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment. There is plenty of historical evidence to justify these feelings, too. Trying to take over American manufacturing just added to the resentment which naturally extended to Japanese products in the USA.
In the 80's, HD had NO technology advances or advantage over the Japanese MCs. HD had bumbling management, and a constant turnover of shareholders, totally disinterested in the motorcycle market outside of making a buck. Certainly no visionaries were in the forefront or in any position to steer the company towards improving their product. The immediate bottom line was where the MBAs in control had the primary interest, and if the quick buck couldn't be made, then either sell the company, or dismantle it to make maximum profit on the remaining assets. There are plenty of parallels in American Company business practices.
The ideology was vastly different in Japan, as the long view was considered far more important than short term profit.
I'm sure others will see it differently.
I actually always wanted an HD. I like working on machines, and I'm sure I'd have had plenty of that owning an HD. But, even one that was in baskets sold for 10 times the price of a single working Honda. Economics won me over. And, being a technocrat, new technology and capability always had more fascination than simply having big iron.
When you can take a 550cc 4 cyl and outdistance a 1200 twin, and then still have it running 20-30 years afterwards, with only routine maintenance, it tells me I made the right choice in 1975. NO Harley of that era would still be useful today without several overhauls and 5 times the purchase price to keep it functional. It's been awhile, but I believe that first SOHC4 Honda cost me $800 to begin the odyssey in 1975. How much would a 1974 HD have cost me to go 45000 miles? I don't know. But, I bet it would have been far more than my entire collection today.
Certainly there will be lot's of disagreement with my reasoning. But, hey, I gotta be me!
Cheers,
