I'd like to think that the folks at H-D that are going out on strike would find more novel ways of displaying their displeasure with management upon their return than the quality of the product, but the truth is human nature being what it is, the first few weeks of vehicles built after this strike is settled are more than likely going to be clunkers. I suppose that QA will redouble it's efforts to try to catch anyone deliberately producing poor quality, but the line moves on and the push from the top will be to recapture schedule. My advice would be not to buy from any dealer with a poor reputation for processing warranty issues. We've talked about this before, but now would be a good time for folks on the site to post those dealers with a good or bad reputation for warranty. My dealer San Diego H-D has been excellant in the past on processing claims, but as Beagle has pointed out, the execution of the warranty repair can be somewhat lacking depending on the tech assigned to your bike. Beyond that however, is that once again demand is going to exceed supply and the wait for CVO models is only going to get worse. I would imagine that the 08 model year release could be affected as well. All is speculation at this point, but as I pointed out in an earlier post, my gut feeling is that this strike is being driven by managements fear of becoming overburdened with entitlements as have the automakers. If that is the case, management will not back away from their original offer until some serious pain has been inflicted upon the company by the strike. Because of the skill level involved, this is not a situation where replacement workers ( Scabs in union parlance) can be brought in nor is it possible for management to continue building motorcycles by staffing the line with lower and mid level management employees. In my opinion, this strike is going to be ugly. The only saving grace as I stated earlier is that as it lengthens, the value of used vehicles is going to rise as dealers look for product to put on the showroom floor to sell.
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