Has anyone here ever ridden a Buell? I've ridden a couple and didn't think much of them, and as someone here previously said, Harley's biggest mistake was bailing them out a few years ago when they were going under, so when Harley realised that they were sucking much needed dollars out of Harley's bottom line during the US's greatest financial crisis since the great depression, they cut Buell, which was no great loss in my opinion, lots of people liked them, the problem was that nobody actually bought them.
Comparing Honda to Harley is dumb. Honda will build anything with an engine in it if they can see a market, they build everything from weed wackers to airplanes, and their motorcycle production ranges from cheap scooters for their Asian market right through to two wheeled cars for the well-heeled American touring set. Harley is a niche-market bike, and other niche-market manufacturers like Triumph, BMW, Ducati etc (who are all suffering due to the financial downturn) are still very envious of Harley's sales figures.
Should Harley diversify to compete with Asian manufacturers? No. For a start, they'd have to move their manufacturing base off-shore to capitalize on cheap labour costs in countries like China and Taiwan to be able to introduce a new unproven product to compete with known products (Honda has been manufacturing small single cylinder scooters with virtually no major mechanical changes since the 1960's, so it's not just Harley that been selling the same old stuff, as some folks here would contend) and what mid-sized sportsbikes or multi-cylinder tourers could Harley build that the Japanese manufacturers couldn't?
Triumph has been struggling with it's sports bike range since John Bloor re-birthed the Triumph brand in the early 1990's in competition with the Japanese big four, their bikes are fine, just not outstanding, and Triumph are slowly moving away from sports bikes in favour of naked bikes and modern replica's of the brand's iconic twins, once again relying on nostalgia to sell with models reminiscent of it's glory days, like "Bonneville" and "Tiger", not to mention another old Triumph/BSA crossover, the "Rocket III". I suppose you could argue that this is "diversification", in reverse, in that the "New Triumph" started manufacturing modern sports bikes, then took a step backwards to build "old school" vertical twins.
Harley's sales figures will rise and fall depending on the state of the economy, and like many other US companies, they may occasionally need Government assistance, and they may need to "rationalize" their operation to suit the current market environment. No biggie, once the economy picks up again, the folks who are currently being very careful with their money will be happy to start buying luxury goods again, and Harley's sales will pick up again. Over the last 100 years or so, Harley has weathered the economy, a couple of world wars and the "Japanese motorcycle invasion" that killed the British motorcycle manufacturers dead, and they'll still be going well in years to come, building something a little bit different from the majority of bikes available, worldwide.
I think that's great, the last thing I want to see is the Japanese "Big Four" taking over all motorcycle manufacturing and dictating what we'll all be riding in the future, after all, it's the "niche market" motorcycle manufacturers that are keeping the big four on their toes.
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