Harley-Davidson is presently known for selling highly expensive motorcycles bought by people who want to pretend that they’re in a biker gang. It’s an image that the company’s new CEO, Artie Starrs, desperately wants to fix as he leads the Motor Company into the future. A big part of that fix will be two entry-level models. Harley-Davidson is bringing the air-cooled Sportster back from the dead. But more than that, Harley-Davidson is also reaching into its bag of dead models to revive the forgotten Sprint. When the new Sprint hits the road in 2027, Harley says it’ll be an attainable bike for likely well under $10,000.
Harley-Davidson has had to weather some rough storms over the past several years. According to Harley-Davidson’s First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Presentation, 2025 was a bit of a breaking point for the brand. Harley says its retail volumes have fallen 40 percent since 2019, and that wasn’t even the worst of it. Margins fell 18 percent in that span of time. And dealers? Their profitability fell by 80 percent. Back in February, the Motor Company reported a $279 million quarterly loss with motorcycle sales down 26 percent. 2024 was another rough year for Harley, with revenue down 13 percent and operating income down by 58 percent.
Harley-Davidson has seen some management shakeups during that span from 2019 to now. Matthew Levatich, the architect of the ambitious ‘More Roads To Harley-Davidson‘ initiative, resigned as CEO in 2020. His replacement, Jochen Zeitz, neutered More Roads, announced ‘Rewire’, then ‘Hardwire,’ and decided to turn the Motor Company into a luxury lifestyle brand. That failed, too, and Zeitz is gone. Now, as of late 2025, Artie Starrs is in the CEO hot seat of the Bar and Shield. Starrs, who isn’t known as a motorcycle guy but for his leadership at Topgolf, has his own big ideas to fix Harley-Davidson.
The ‘Back To The Bricks’ strategy seeks to reverse many of the changes Zeitz made. Under Starrs, Harley-Davidson has already announced price cuts to several motorcycle models. But making existing models cheaper isn’t good enough. Starrs wants to bring more riders to Harley, and not just ones with more money than they know what to do with. To facilitate that, Harley is going to bring back the air-cooled Sportster 883, a bike that hasn’t been made since 2022. But the bigger news is the rebirth of the Sprint, a name that hasn’t been used in 52 years. This new bike is supposed to be the cheapest motorcycle Harley-Davidson has sold in years.
Harley Wants To Revitalize Itself Again
Harley’s ‘Back To The Bricks’ presentation admits that, in recent years, the company screwed up. According to the presentation, Harley of the recent past prioritized its most expensive touring cruisers and electric motorcycles over bikes that are rider-centric. Indeed, Zeitz’s plan called for fewer motorcycles to be sold, but at higher prices. He really wanted you to spend more than $50,000 on that pretty CVO and for Harley to be an exclusive luxury lifestyle brand. Harley doubled down on catering mostly to its traditional buyers while ignoring other markets, continuing to leave cash on the table to its competition.
Back To The Bricks calls for Harley-Davidson to stop trying to be an exhausting lifestyle brand that slings more T-shirts than motorcycles and instead celebrate motorcycle culture and get back to making bikes for motorcycle riders.
To get to that place, Harley says it first needs to make some internal changes, reduce dealership inventory, sell the bikes it currently has in its lineup, and revamp its marketing platform. That’s all happening right now, apparently. Then, next year, Harley wants to put cheaper entry-level motorcycles on the road, introduce better parts and accessories, and run targeted offers.
The Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 Is Coming Back
The two new motorcycles leading the charge have been in development for a while. As I reported last year, Harley-Davidson began a new entry-level motorcycle project in 2021, roughly around the time when the Street 750 was discontinued and before the last old Sportster was built. This project operated in secret until 2025, when Harley announced that one of the bikes would be called the Sprint and would be priced “below $6,000.” Back then, Harley only said that the Sprint was being developed alongside an unnamed cruiser.
Now, we know the cruiser will be the rebirth of the old Sportster 883. Starrs has even confirmed that the new motorcycle will have an 883cc air-cooled V-twin engine just like the old Sportster.
No further hard details have been given about the engine, but if the teaser image is anything to go by, this engine will look very similar to the old Evolution. This engine appears to be a 45-degree pushrod V-twin, which are attributes that Harley’s fancy Revolution Max doesn’t have. This engine even appears to have the same circular airbox that the Iron 883 used to have.
Harley-Davidson said that the reason it had to kill the old Sportster in 2022 was that the Evo couldn’t meet modern European emissions requirements. So, if this is just the old platform brought back from the dead, presumably, the emissions issue has been cured. Or, the new Sportster could just use a Revolution Max, and the teaser image doesn’t actually represent what the production version will look like.
At the very least, the teaser image suggests the new Sportster 883 will look awfully close to the old Iron 883. I suppose we’ll have to see.
Honestly, the Sportster part of the news is fun and a little weird, but I don’t think it’s the biggest deal here. The new Sportster will come in at $10,000. While it’s good to have another lower-priced Harley, the Nightster is already priced at $9,999, so a $10,000 Sportster isn’t Earth-shattering.
Harley’s Even Cheaper Model
The curveball is still the Sprint. We’ve known about this bike since last year, but now we finally get a teaser image and a little more information.
In 2025, Harley-Davidson said the new entry-level Sprint will launch in 2026 for “below $6,000.” Now, Harley simply says the new bike, which will have an oil-cooled engine, will come in at “under $10,000.” Confusing things elsewhere in Harley’s presentation is a chart that shows where the Sprint will land, and the projection shows it coming in at over $6,000, but well less than $10,000. So, who knows?
Most motorcycle publications believe the new Sprint will be based on a Harley-Davidson-Hero middleweight from India. If so, the constantly changing tariff situation could easily explain why Harley no longer thinks it can hit its original price target.
If we assume the teaser image is representative of what the Sprint will look like, the engine outlined in the image is not a V-twin. Instead, it looks similar to the thumper housed in the Harley-Davidson X440.
Unavailable to American Harley buyers, the X440 was designed by India’s Hero MotoCorp with Harley-Davidson giving its blessing, and it’s been on sale since 2023 in India.
It sports a 440cc air-and-oil-cooled single-cylinder engine with 27 HP and 28 lb-ft of torque on tap. Like the baby Harleys of old, an X440 won’t lead its segment in power, but it can be an affordable way into the Bar and Shield. At the very least, it’s more power than you’d get out of a Royal Enfield 350.
The Sprint’s Heritage
If the Sprint is indeed based on an international model, it would be a fitting name. The last time Harley slapped the Sprint name on a bike, it was on an affordable motorcycle it imported from Italy. Here’s what I wrote last year about the old Sprint:
Back in the 1950s, Harley-Davidson found itself battling the increasing popularity of imported motorcycles in America. To help shore up its position against the flood of imports, Harley-Davidson purchased 50 percent of Italy’s Aermacchi in 1960. Aermacchi-Harley-Davidson was born and soon enough, Harley began importing Italian Aermacchi motorcycles into America with Harley-Davidson badging on them.
In 1961, Harley imported the Aermacchi 250, renaming it the 250 Sprint. This bike, which was really only a Harley in name only, sported a 246cc single making 18 HP. In 1969, Aermacchi bumped the engine up to 344cc, giving birth to the SS 350 Sprint, which made around 25 HP.
[…]
The Sprint was discontinued in 1974, and Harley’s Aermacchi experiment ended in 1978 when the brand was sold to the Castiglioni brothers of Cagiva fame. The Aermacchi Harleys used to be deeply unpopular, leading to the Aermacchis tending to be some of the cheapest Harley-branded bikes that you can find for sale in your local classifieds. However, these old bikes seem to be gaining a bit of a fandom nowadays. Maybe that’s why Harley isn’t afraid to use the name again for the new bike.
If you want to read more about Harley’s weird AMF era from my reporting, click here and here.
Zeitz said this about the new Sprint last year:
“Inspired by our heritage and the spirit of the iconic Harley Davidson Sprint motorcycle, this new bike embodies boldness, irreverence and fun, capturing the rebellious energy that defines the Harley-Davidson experience.”
While we don’t know what platform the new Sprint will ride on, it’s clear that Harley is going for more of a cruiser look. This is notable because the old Sprint was a standard-style motorcycle, and so is the X440. If the Sprint is based on the X440, it’s unlikely to be a direct import of the Indian bike. Instead, it could use the X440’s heart, but with an American design. That would also explain why these new entry-level bikes have been in development for years.
Harley Wants To Sell More Used Bikes, Too
Something else that’s fascinating is what Harley wants to do with its lineup. Harley’s roadmap calls for 20 new models over the next three years, which will be based on the existing Revolution Max, Softail, Touring, and Trike platforms. Weirdly, the Sprint and Sportster 883 show up under the Softail column. Something that gets my attention is that Harley thinks it needs another Revolution Max model around the $10,000 mark. It would be so cool if the Café Racer that I wrote about recently lands in that spot.
Harley-Davidson has an ambitious plan for the new Sporty and the new Sprint. In Harley’s eyes, these will be the bikes that get you into the company’s ecosystem. Then, one day, you’ll upgrade to a bigger and more expensive Harley. The Motor Company recognizes that some of the biggest competition for new motorcycles is used motorcycles. It’s not hard to find a nearly new motorcycle with low miles on the used market. For some people, there’s no point in buying new. So, Harley-Davidson wants to cater to used buyers by strengthening its used inventory. Ideally, Harley thinks, these Sprints and Sportsters will have good resale values and can be sold by dealers again as used bikes, padding profits.
This plan isn’t really new at all. Harley’s played this entry-level bike dance several times over the decades. Remember the Buell Blast? That was supposed to be the ultimate beginner motorcycle that you bought when you were young and then later traded in for a big Harley cruiser. The old Sprint was an entry-level ploy, as was the Street series (below) and, at times, the Sportster. So, Harley is not blazing any new trails or finding new roads.
That being said, I’m still happy to see Harley try an entry-level machine again. There are a lot of young people who want to ride, but don’t have Harley-Davidson money. So they go to their local Royal Enfield or Honda dealer instead. Smaller motorcycles are decent sellers right now, but Harley just doesn’t play in that market in America.
I cannot wait to see what happens next here. I missed out on being able to ride the old Sprint when it was new, and I’ve been bummed that Harley’s kept its strange X350RA Chinese bike confined to its rider training program. I want to ride the X440!
But I also like Harley’s new direction of opening itself up to a greater variety of potential riders again. Back To The Bricks might not be as ambitious as More Roads, but it seems like a move down a good path. But there’s a lot that has to land just right, from the price of the Sprint to how Harley markets itself going forward. I know it’s easy to hate on Harley, but I don’t roll like that. I genuinely hope it works out this time around!
Top graphic images: Harley-Davidson
What if somebody proposed starting a car company that made only retro-styled cars & trucks. Everything is a PT Cruiser! Crazy, right? Well, that’s what H-D is in the motorcycle world. Every bike looks like it rolled out of the 1950’s. Crazy, right?
Isn’t an entire line of retro vehicles basically MINI and Morgan’s entire business model? Also, Fiat, when they were in that phase where everything was styled to resemble the 1957 Nuova 500
Yeah, and how well did that stuff sell? OK for a few years, and then downhill.
Hard to draw conclusions with MINI, each new generation has been larger, bulkier, and with less direct 1950s influence than the previous one, and each new generation seems to sell worse than the previous one
Fun fact: the Kawasaki KZ440 – same engine size (well, 443cc) but a parallel twin* – was rated at 40hp (@8500rpm) and 26lbft (@7000rpm)… in 1980.
Funner fact: the KZ440 LTD uses the same tire sizes as the 2000-ish Sportster.
Even more funner fact: the 2000-ish Sportster final drive belt will fit the KZ440 LTD. It’s 1.125″ wide vs the Kawasaki’s 1.25″ but has the same tooth count and pitch.
* Yes, I’m aware engine architecture affects output, but having a new bike get smoked by a middle-aged Craigslist special of the same displacement is not a great look.
Is this the bike FortNine recently did a video about? I spent 30 or so minutes looking on FB Marketplace after that video.
*checks YT*
No, that was a slightly newer model: the 454 LTD. It’s been a while since I thought about those!
IIRC they were water-cooled (vs air-cooled) and were a reduced-displacement version of the engine from the EX500 sport[ish] bike.
The 454s were somewhat hobbled in that the exhaust made a 90-degree turn right out of the cylinder head and then made another 90-degree turn just after that (to clear the frame downtubes). The turns were bad for flow, so it wouldn’t rev very well. (Again, it’s been ages – could be wrong about the details)
It was still An Motorcycle, so that’s not too bad 🙂
Ha! Jinx! I looked it up at the same time.
😀 😀 😀
Nope, it was the 454LTD. Which was just a successor to the 440. Still worth a watch.
https://youtu.be/QtyEl6iI-x8?si=eqlwtXCetkOp2_8C
H-D is a victim of it’s own success. It has created such an iconic image that it makes it difficult for the brand to expand to other markets – like a type-cast actor who is known for one type of role which they are very good at, but now wants to try something else.
Too many outsiders to motorcycles equate the brand with some of the d-bag owners, but that is such an overblown simplification.
I think the real problem is the days of Easy Rider having cultural significance is long gone. Cruising the open roads of America on a motorbike doesn’t have much weight when googles streetview makes nearly everywhere accessible.
I would argue that the idea of a cross country ride or simply getting the fuck out of your own neighborhood once in a while is even more culturally significant now than in the 60 years since the movie came out.
Turn off the damn screens, put down your phone and go touch grass, breathe some fresh air and see the world. We’ve never been more in need to getting away.
I feel that if H-D plays it’s cards right with the right product at the right price, they could gain a massive new fanbase of people looking for either a 30 min or 2 week freedom ride away from social media and all that other hot garbage.
Remember when Harley won four MotoGP Championships in 74, 75, and 76 with Aermacchis ridden by Walter Villa?
Probably not, but what beautiful bikes.
I do kind of like the VR1000 in race bodywork.
Good to see them bring back the classic Sportster. But the plain silver paintjob is really ho-hum. There were some years when the Sportster had some pretty awesome paint jobs maybe 15 years ago(?).
There has to be a day soon when their average customer is either dead or too old to ride and this seems like the beginning of that.
I have heard many people say they should just be a lifestyle brand that buys, fixes and resells their old bikes and not bother with new ones.
Yet another cruiser won’t do the job – HD needs to be willing to offer a different format. That Hero bike pictured is probably the answer for newer and younger riders. If the purists don’t like it, then they’re on the right path…
The V-Rod was a flop. Greatest bike they ever made. Harley riders wouldn’t touch it.
The V-Rod was a different take on the heavy cruiser format. It would have only appealed to existing cruiser buyers in the best case. Growth is going to come from non-Harley riders.
Harley is in for “bagger” racing – what if they added a (relatively) smaller sportbike with fairings? It’d be completely different from all the other stuff on the HD sales floor, and would have legitimate lineage to HD’s racing programs.
You’re right, traditional Harley riders wouldn’t touch it. But you might get a new crop of riders approaching the brand.
It would have lineage but it wouldn’t have performance, I guarantee it. They cannot build a competitive sport bike. At best they might be able to build a decent street fighter, like the Bronx concept, but it won’t be a class-leader in any measure. (I still kinda wanted a Bronx though)
Bagger racing makes as much sense as backhoe dancing, but less fun to watch
https://youtu.be/QRN4inEH1Qs
Ha, well put.
Indian market bike sort of smart. I haven’t seen anyone importing heros or any other Indian market bikes at scale. Just your Royal Enfields. Many indian bikes are dirt cheap some models even cheaper then comparable Chinese bikes in China.
People buy Royal Enfield most if not all have to know they are indian. Put hero Harley at the top golfs with the a big $5.9k sign and watch the dentists go crazy.
Harley culture fading away with the boomers sounds fine to me. They’re right up there with the lifted truck crowd. A bunch of posturing, performative blowhards.
I haven’t noticed the boomer demographic so much in lifted trucks. We aren’t THAT stupid.
It might be more of a left right thing than a young old thing, so maybe in other parts of the country it’s different.
No, he’s saying the lifted truck crowd is on the same tier as the Boomer Harley crows, not that its the same people. The lifted truck crowd mostly seems to be Millennials and maybe some Xers, a lot of them seem to be our current equivalent of Yuppies, if they have a new truck. And if they do, its going to be Stormtrooper white and black, and parked in front of a McMansion with an interior decorated with cursive words printed on faux barn wood
The Harley Davidson dealership experience will need change in order for any of these new bikes to be successful. I tried buying a xr1200 from 3 different dealers and each time I was talked down at for wanting that bike and they tried to upsell me into a “real Haley”. I ended up buying a Suzuki 1200 Bandit and being happy with my choice.
I feel like buying a Harley is the equivalent to walking into a Guitar Center, asking for the most expensive Les Paul they have, loudly butchering a few Led Zeppelin songs on it, then acting like it’s a flex when you walk out with an $8,000 guitar that hasn’t seen a significant upgrade since the 1950s….
At least I have some hope that the Les Paul buyer doesn’t dress up like Jimmy Page while playing it.
More tassels.
Topgolf, huh? Gonna rename the company Parley-Divotson?
What? The new CEO is Happy Gilmore? Ha ha
Harley-Davidson: Flintstones technology, Jetsons pricing.
I want them to succeed but suspect I will outlive the motor company.
Claims of their demise have been floating around for literally 50 years.
Harley keeps beating the allegations! To Harley’s credit, it does keep pulling enough tricks out of its sleeve to survive another decade or so.
I have over 200,000 miles on my two BMW’s and had nothing against Harley’s, as some friends of mine owned them. Then I moved to an area that had such a nasty HD attitude towards ANY other bike, which was fostered by the woman who owned the local dealership, that I came to detest that attitude and that bike. But I’d hate to see them fail, so, good luck HD.
The flesh-colored pants in that topshot were a bold choice. Fooled me for a second.
So the plan is bring back and old bike with a new engine, and import a bike from India that is worse than the other bikes in the same segment also from to same place but make it more money.
We have so many options in the size and price range they are listing that would beat their new bike. Every Royal Enfield would be cheaper and equal or better spec.
Harley doesn’t just have a product problem, they have an image problem. I ride every day to work. I wouldn’t ride a Harley if you paid me. The HD rider image is so tainted at this point they will have years or work to over come it but at the risk of turning away an increasingly old and intransigent group that will make noise about it even if they don’t own and have never owned a Harley.
The only time I ever though I would ride a Harley was when I parked next to a Livewire. It was pretty nice. I looked like a nice around town bike that would be quick and quiet and fun. They dropped that ball.
Ah, a new Harley to gather the ire of present Harley owners. Wonder how many of the president’s favorite insults will be slung at these.
That said, color me, who is not a Harley owner…or a motorcyclist…intrigued. Because a lot of younger riders are riding stuff in this displacement and size class, and even in the cruiser style. Make a sporty one alongside the low-seat one, and hope they don’t break easily, so at least people can’t whinge about that. The CVO bagger crowd will still find an excuse, but still…
To my mind, one of the big issues with HD, aside from the whole wannabe biker gang look thing, is that basically every current HD looks and generally feels pretty much like every other HD going back to the invention of the wheel. (Pan-America aside). The big V-Twin, while and iconic look, has defined HD for so long that it’s almost become their whole design culture. Has no one at HD noticed that a sizable portion of the bikes on the road are sport bikes? Crotch Rockets? Naked Bikes? Cafe Racers? Yes, I know there have been many attempts but most of these were primarily brand engineering exercises (like the Ameracchi above) or like the unfortunate Buell, but even that was just an attempt to shoehorn the same V-Twin into a sportbike frame.
This stuff above looks like progress on HDs part, but if it comes out just looking like a smaller, cheaper version of every other HD I can’t see it really tipping the scales much. The people who don’t want a HD won’t what them because they look like a HD, the current HD devotees with just write it off as a fake and it will go down like several of the other attempts they have made over the years.
HD needs a serious overhaul and from what I’ve seen in the past, there isn’t the will inside the company to really get it done. They always start, it gets dicey and they slip back into big cruisers and t-shirt sales.
The 440 looks, rough when you compare it to the other motorcycles in the class.
Compared to a triumph 400: Why does it look like the tank and seat and side panels are set on top of a different bike on the harley? why does the engine look so huge if its only 440cc? It’s visually a mess. How is that supposed to make me spend more than on a known bike with better performance?
I’m sure its a stop gap, but this can’t be the only idea or we will be back here next year with a new CEO and a new old idea to “save HD”.
Based on the teaser image, I suspect the American version won’t look like the one sold in India. Thankfully…
That’s basically to my point though, the teaser silhouette above still looks like a Harley. Ok, it’s only a thumper and not a twin, but it’s still the same basic cruiser look. That’s great for the HD faithful, but what about all the others that want another style of bike? Why not a naked bike to compete with the Honda CB300R? A cafe racer style (admittedly that has been mentioned) to go after the RE Continental 650? Anything besides a cruiser?
The Harley faithful aren’t going to like or buy a Sprint. I remember what they used to say about the Sportster 883 when that was a thing.
There is a market for smaller cruisers. The Royal Enfield Meteor 350 and the Honda Rebel 300/500 are decent examples. No idea if this is a market Harley should be playing in, but I suppose we’ll see.
When I lived across the street from the Hells Angels in New York City, one of them had a bike that looked for all the world like somebody had put a knucklehead engine into a Laverda chassis. It had the usual clutch spinning out where it could chew your foot off, but also had a four leading shoe brake on it. As opposed to most of the other Angels that had what looked for all the world like a bicycle coaster brake on the front wheel.
Anyway, that was the essence of HD, refining it just dilutes that. If you want a sofa, get a Honda.
And, yeah I hear terrible things about the Angels, but they were always nice to me.
Now that think of it, it may have been a Knucklehead on a Rickmam.
The basic answer is that they would rather compete with the Honda Rebel 300 because for some reason Harley just will not do a standard bike. There must be some kind of internal rule that says a Harley must not have meaningful rear suspension travel
Logically they would do like Honda and make a cruiser, standard, sport bike, and ADV on the same basic platform.
I heard a rumor they were reviving the XLCR, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
There’s so little value for money in my opinion, like you say, blacksmith product for CNC prices.
I’m an ideal Harley conquest. I don’t hate the brand. I’m half the average age of their existing customer. I have already owned some Japanese thumpers. But man, I don’t want a cruiser. Why would I want the motorcycle equivalent of hellcat Durango???
Give me suspension I can be proud of. Give me a heads up riding style (ADV positioning on a street focused bike). And give me something that oozes cool, craftsmanship, and engineering prowess.
Hellcat Durango? Maybe a pentastar with a K&N air filter.
Hahaha fair fair, maybe it’s more malaise era. Huge engines in huge bikes of little technical interest?
Closer. Their new Revolution Max engine is interesting but that is not a volume seller for them.
Sort of the John Deere of motorcycles, but I’m thinking of the 501 cubic inch two cylinder D.
The Flying Millard V Twin would be about right, only 5 liters but plenty for a bike.
Stock Chevy 305 with glass packs….. 125hp at 125dB…
That’ll hit a nerve.
The Harley CVO comes in at a pricetag of $110,000 with 153hp.
That’s ~50-60hp less than the current crop of literbikes right off the showroom floor that sell for a quarter (or less) of that pricetag.
What keeps me from riding is other cars. The last time I rode motorcycles was in the late 90s. It was dangerous, and you learn better anticipation, but modern drivers are much worse.
Eventually I decided the roadster platform is basically an armored bike. It’s still dangerous, probably as much as riding in the 90s. But at least I now have a blanket of airbags.
It is rather shocking how many times I look at other cars on the road, and their drivers are just head down at their Facebook/Instagram/Threads/TikTok/YouTube feeds. It explains why it seems like everyone sucks at driving now.
I quit when I moved back to Arizona, it used to be a great state to ride in, now, nope. I’m also really disappointed by the behavior of the riders I see. Minnesota was the best state I’ve ridden in, ironic as it had the shortest season..
About a year ago I pulled up behind a car with three phones on the dash: one for maps, one for delivery instruction (doordash presumably), and one with tiktoks that the driver was just swiping through. After turning off that road I pulled over, removed my helmet, turned off the bike, and just walked to go sit in the grass for a bit.
See my post above, I strait up sold mine.
What’s worse; it’s not shocking to me anymore. My new problem is noticing distracted drivers occasionally makes me a distracted driver.
What’s worse is that it’s drivers buried in their phones now in 3 ton trucks and SUVs. And honestly even the ones that pay attention still drive carelessly near cycles. They follow at 1-2 car lengths, move into their lane within a few feet of them and hug the line next to them. I honestly don’t know how anyone can ride given the sorry state of licensing right now. I have a 4-wheel minimum and that certainly isn’t changing, probably ever.
At least the Harley riders image might make others intimidated enough to keep away from them on the road?
One thing I have noticed over the years is that when motorcycles are lane sharing (aka lane splitting), a line of Hell’s Angels will get quite the wide berth from car drivers. Ditto for California Highway Patrol bikes. Safest time to lane share would be right behind one of those groups, did it myself back in the day. Also giving a respectful following distance myself.
A few years ago I watched a guy go from a busy 4 lane road onto a 65mph highway while eating a sunday with a spoon while watching a move on a dash mounted phone. When I got home, I listed my motorcycle for sale.
Motorcycles seen less common these days which makes drivers even less likely to look for them.
The worst I ever saw is a dude brushing his teeth. At 75-80mph on the freeway.
At least you had the sense. Most of the time it requires close personal tragedy. My buddy was a big Harley guy his son was a Harley mechanic pulling out of the dealership he got hit and almost killed by someone doing tiktok and eating. He is now a plumber after a hard road back. My buddy sold all his street bikes. Just kept a ATV and dirt bike for off road.
My neighbor is a big hd guy his good friend was killed last year on a Harley by the same type distracted driver. He put it away bought focused on his atv. Then saw my other neighbor messing with some comp bikes and me with a China bike and a China e dirt bike and came back a few days later with a Yamaha and Honda dirt bike. Everyone is going off road because the roads aren’t safe.
last year on my birthday my kid was tossed off her bf’s harley when he tried to pass a truck and trailer on an on ramp. She has some scars and loss of strength in her right hand. they are not dating anymore.
I wouldn’t ride a Harley if someone gave me one.
Now there’s certainly something worth interrogating! As a USian, I do have some inherit desire to own a HD and support the home grown brand.. but as a younger guy who is firmly against the typical Harley riding styling, and Harley rider for that matter, all they have to offer me are quite expensive cruisers! They represent a whole nation of motorcyclists and sale a whopping two types of motorcycle, and that’s being charitable to the Pan America..
This may be insane, but I’d love to see HD actually do a fairing sports bike because it at least would be a sign of life, and a genuine cafe racer would be on that path..
I have a hunter orange Donkey that goes by the name KLR650, and Harley currently sells nothing with as much genuine personality
In the late 1970s H-D offered the XLCR, which they called a café racer and was about as cafe-ish as H-D was likely to get. It was quite a failure.
Also they tried the faired-sport-bike route with Buell, and we saw what happened there.
I’m aware of the ancient history, but this is not 1977 and I barely knew the word Buell before the internet told me what a spectacular missed opportunity it allegedly was..
Ultimately HD’s problems are price, reliability and brand image. A new cafe or sportsbike will do little to move either of those needles, but I’m not sure what an alternate path is left beyond continuing to sell hunks of iron that appeal to one sole demographic while fading further into irrelevancy. Don’t see how that’s any good for share holders
The only way to fix Harley is the expensive way. There’s no strategical solution, no market repositioning, all Harley can do to become a legitimate brand again is invest a shitload of money into improving quality while taking a hit on pricing.
They need to implement Kaizen the painful way, it will hurt the feelings of every plant manager and project lead who thinks they have it figured out because they’ve “been doing it for 30 years”, and it will cost a lot of money up front.
The only way to save biking in general is to convince the lizard people to put together a new government that hates big SUVs and loves infrastructure spending.
The Harley dealers are a massive road block too. They are just as ate up as the geriatric dentists riding the bikes. It’s also sort of rare to have a single brand motorcycle dealer in the us and many other markets. I think that’s another part of there issue. Honda can get away with it because image and diverse products. But it’s becoming more and more evident Harley can’t with their singular focus.
They might be better offer just bringing in as many of the hero bikes as they can and making the dealers sell them in part of their space then checking that they actually are. Throw in some ATV and sxs for good measure.
I don’t hear much good about the dealership experience, especially from buyers looking for anything other than the high-value “traditional” models
They have sort of been a merch store that sells motorcycles for a while. They are even kind enough to drag you to the merch store while they are doing the paperwork so you can add your merch to your bike financing.
I honestly think Eric Buell got in the way of his own success. Just… start with a standard sport bike. With a standard suspension. And Standard Brakes and a standard exhaust system and a standard seat and and and and…
If Harleys are too traditional, Buell was too freaking weird.
Fun fact – Harley would not allow Buell to sell a motorcycle with a full fairing.
The Rotax engined bike was supposed to happen in the 90’s but H-D insisted Buell make the single cylinder Blast that Erik hated before he could do a real sport bike. (Buell famously crush the last Blast to come off the assembly line into a little cube.) Then when Buell finally got the OK for a liquid cooled bike Harley brass said it couldn’t have a full fairing like a Japanese bike so we got the really weird looking 1125R.
The EBR 1190RS was the bike Buell wanted to make in the 90’s.
The “Our Roads” radio commercial was pretty bad. It implied, get out of our way, it’s our road to ride on, not yours
I feel like the thing Harley has to figure out is how to sell to someone who isn’t already a Harley person- A Harley comes with a lot of baggage.
Like, you can buy a Honda and no one will be like “oh, you got one of those?” Ditto Indian, Victory or pretty much any other brand.
But if you buy a Harley, you’ve bought the image that Harley comes with and a lot of folks do not want that image. Folks will want to talk to you about why you bought a Harley. They will make assumptions about you, or at least, that’s what it feels like.
Harley makes some very cool bikes and I would love to see them succeed for another 100 years but I can’t help but think that Willie G’s steadfast focus on the painting of David Mann as the be all end all of Harley image may have become their biggest problem.
And that was the purpose of Buell.
But we all know how that went….
Buell was just too weird for it’s own good. I remember when the Buells were starting to be a thing and they were super cool but… those weird brakes were weird. And the fuel in frame idea was weird. And the geometry of the bikes was weird and the engine was weird and it ended up just feeling like a mirror universe harley- like, you aren’t just going to be able to ride this thing, you are going to have to talk to people about it every time you stop.
And they felt like, yeah, you’re gonna have to go to the harley dealership to get this fixed because no other shop is gonna touch it AND the harley dealership HATED them. Like, I remember riding to the big Harley dealership so I could check one out and the salesman being utterly dismissive. Like, he had a whole sales pitch about why my sport bike wasn’t as good as a real harley and then I said I wanted to look at the Buells and he just walked away.
Also the super tiny bicycle saddle stye seats they ran for a couple years did them exactly zero favors.