Just look at the Moco's 3rd quarter sales results. According to HD everything is fine and there profit is up over 3rd quarter last year. Only issue I see is they sold 4K + less bikes than they did last year but made more money than last year. Now does anyone else wonder why the price of a new bike is what it is?
That was the whole idea behind busting the balls of the union, getting sweetheart deals from the states and cities to "keep their plants in those states and cities", hiring temporary part time workers at half the wages, etc.. It's the same playbook that's been used for the last decade throughout industry.
Some of the higher profit per unit comes from higher efficiencies in the revamped production operations, no doubt. Then they cheapened much of the product, and raised the price. When you lump it all together, they make more while actually producing less. Now if they would just spend some of those extra profits on improving quality, reliability, and customer service, it might all be worth it. My gut feeling however is that they will just keep pocketing the extra profits and keep screwing the customers, until the customers finally get the balls to say no more, enough is enough.
JMHO - Jerry