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[iski]

Two very well written posts 

Agreed. The diagnosis is very good, but the patient is on life support & appears to still be dying.

[J.D.]

When it's all said and done, the rise and fall of H-D will be an interesting case study.  Classic example of having the goose laying golden eggs but also an appetite for goose meat.

[G 97]

Good companies fail in good times and this is what Harley did. They became so focussed on customer analyticals and data mining customer segments with outreach and youth that they never established a product connection. They then replaced top management with outside non motorcycle related people from Johnson Controls, Pepsi, Pontiac and food companies etc. This all resulted in loss of focus and direction. They had a firm grasp on customer demographics and analytics but completely dropped the ball with product development, quality control and the rider connection. They completely mismanaged the MV Agusta acquisition - costing them well over $150 million in losses, then promoted the guy who spearheaded the deal to CEO. They never were able to leverage the Buell product towards youth outreach or any significant new customer acquisitions. Their dealer development, outside of them encouraging the dealers to build Taj Mahal facilities, is non existent. No salesmanship, no used inventory strategies, no service improvements. Just glorified order takers. Now they are scrambling to diversify into electric, adventure and sport street motorcycle segments which, ironically they had with both Buell and MV Agusta. A text book case of mis management. RIP

[Eqcons]

Not sure he got it with the follow baby boomers to the grave and focus on customers.   
 they should focus on quality and making sure all their promised features do in fact work.  Not a Goldwing fan, but they do have quality, and they are reliable and their features do work for a crap load less money.

You hit the nail on the head, Dave.  I posted this on another board in response to more of their plans for the future:

"It really doesn't matter who is at the helm of HD, they continue to get it wrong. Pricing is now ludicrously high, and they put it up year on year, while reducing the spec of the bikes. In their never ending search for cheaper Chinese suppliers, quality gets worse. Reliability is a joke; low mileage water pump failures on the 2014 and up wetheads, until the design was changed, are legendary, Sumping and oil transfer problems on the M8 engine, lifter failures on the 110 TC engine. The list goes on. I've bought my last HD (I bought seven in 13 years, five of them top of the range CVO FLH models) and I won't be replacing my 2014 FLHTKSE - they are just not worth the silly price. I can buy a fully loaded BMW CAR for the same price, and I would be surprised if it ran for as few miles as my Harley does with parts failing. To survive, HD need to get real with the price, the quality, and the reliability!"