Well, the 10's are here and there was definitely some surprises based on what many were saying for the past couple of months... Regardless it was fun reading what everyone thought might happen.
I have said it many times and this year is no different, as far as I'm concerned...
IMHO, the only reason why we have CVO's is due to the stiff competition back in the 90's from all the aftermarket people giving H-D a run for their money on customizing their bikes. So very quickly we saw the H-D P&A catalogue grow by hundreds of pages and almost overnight H-D was in the business of customizing, big time!
Naturally the MoCo was going to do everything it could to have the very best price and drive down the competition's prices to where the little guy just couldn't stay in business any longer. There have been many go by the wayside since the 90's. They did this by mass producing to get the very best price. However, not all products were selling all that great and the MoCo was left with tons of merchandise (families of products) that wasn't moving.
Some very wise marketing guy/gal came up with the unique idea... If we're stuck with all these parts, why don't we throw them on a couple of models, give them a fancy paint scheme and sell them as "in-house" customs at a much higher price? AND presto! We have CVO's. Just to give their success a fighting chance they decided to limit the production and even number some models to make them really appealling and sought after, "must have" bikes.
There is no doubting how well the whole thing worked, although during tough economic times it has become very difficult and therefore we'll be seeing even fewer produced this year.
I believe the Ultra Classic, Ultra Limited (give me a break) is a similar situation. The MoCo most likely had some 103's kicking around from when they abruptly switched to 110 and wanted to use them up. However, this new plan is going to work twofold... Again, during tough economic times it'll be tough to sell the big ticket items, but they still have some left over parts (including TP racks) that won't be selling to well now with the newer version doing so well, so why not build a bike, call it an entry level CVO and give it a price point in between the former "King of the Road" (Ultra) and this beautiful CVO Ultra model, and what the heck it worked before, why not give it a different paint scheme and just a few little bits and pieces and let's see what happens! It will work, believe me.
Now for this so called added TP space for storage... I figure the ONLY added space will be found in the rear corners due to the fact that the new LED lights do not require the rather large space that the old style lights took up. To be fair, it is more space - but not much!
Don't get me wrong, from what I've seen the new models do have some nice features such as the 12V outlet in the TP to charge you phone/IPod/camera etc., and the SESG looks pretty cool although it really needs a chopped TP. I just think there's a lot of hype going on here and until I see them in person, I'm not getting too excited.
Besides, I really do love my Duracell and it'll take a whole lot more than some "smoke & mirrors" to get me out of that seat!
'Nough said!
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Topic: Has anyone heard about the 2010 cvo models yet? (Read 29258 times)