Lots of reasons in my opinion.
A) The 110 motor didn't exactly cause heart palpitations say on the level of the introduction of the Chrysler 426 Hemi.
B) The market for CVO's may be saturated. There's a finite amount of customers willing to lay down $12k over the cost of a regular production Ultra-Classic.
C) Many of our members have gotten so far into modifying thier existing CVO's that they have no desire to start over with a new one.You take folks like Twolanerider,Fired00d,103tHunDer,Otis, Hubbard,and many many others, they're so stone in love with the bikes they have,new models are nice to look at but no way they're worth trading in ole Maudie or whatever.
D) For those members that do want to trade or buy an 09, the SERG is THE model this year. Perhaps the best offering out of Milwaukee/York in many years. I notice your post doesn't mention SERGs sitting around unsold.What that means is down the road, the SERG will retain it's value at a higher percentage than the SEUC.
E) The economy is iffy for many people. I'll offer myself up as an example. With a fixed income, my only chance of extra discretionary funds lies in my investments which have lost 32% as of yesterday since a year ago at this time. I'm not going to pull $35k out of an already weak portfolio. And again in my case, credit is tight. In the process of filing for and being accepted for private disability insurance, California State Disability Insurance and Social Security Disability Income, every credit reporting agency in the known universe is now aware I do not have a job and my income has gone down somewhat. H-D credit will loan me the money to buy a new SERG, but at 15.99%. No thank you.
Bottom line is H-D needs to follow the lead of the auto industry - - - deep discounts and 0% financing
So that's my take on the situation.
B B