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Done with Harley

6K views 99 replies 55 participants last post by  Ghost-Flame 
#1 ·
Just found out that my small "Mom&Pop" dealer is closing. The MoCo is trending towards big new dealerships that look the same and have the same layout and are forcing the smaller shops to either build new buildings to their specs or they will not renew their dealership license. Pierce HD has been a dealer since the mid 1950's and always had great service. Just to say how great, I live about 3 blocks from a huge new HD dealership that has now been owned by 2 different owners in it's 3 years. I ride 27 miles out west of my home to Pierce to buy my stuff. Not just happening here, they are closing a bunch of small dealers all over the country

Now, the MoCo says I can't do that anymore, that I must buy from huge WalMart style dealers that look the same as the dealers in Oklahoma or Michigan, or Texas, or Mars. So, when I sell this Ultra, it will not be replaced by any Harley and I will never own another. This new CEO nearly drove Johnson Controls under, and now he is trying his best to do the same with HD. Next bike you see me on will probably be a Victory :thumbup:

Really ticked me off nojoke
 
#27 ·
SPIKE -

Sell your Harley and buy a VTX1800.

I know where a low milage 2006 VTX1800N2 is that might be for sale! :D


.!
When did Honda make a touring VTX with hard bags, trunk, cruise control, fairing with full gauges and radio, 6 gallon tank and get better than 40mpg? With a 5 year old, I don;t have the time to fab all this crap up now. I need a ready to ride bike, so Victory it is :thumbup:
 
#30 ·
Ask ClevelanRocks - he brought them into the discussion, and I honestly cannot see the connection to this thread. I won't even try to guess and speak for him.

;)
Google is yer friend http://occupywallst.org/

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society.


I can translate that for yah if you only habla Espanol :rolleyes:
 
#33 ·
I honestly do my best to buy from the small "Mom & Pop" type stores or much smaler chains.
I fully understand your reasoning.
That is why I try to show everyone I can a small bike service shop/mini weekend resort/stop called Eagle Vision on Chandler Mtn in AL near Horsepens 40 & Steele.
There are others also like 278 Custom Cycle going towards Altoona Alabama and also 78 Cycle Sales and service near Anniston Army Depot/ Oxford AL. They all service HD and sell parts except Eagle Vision will work on your metric while you eat a burger or hotdog and drink a soda or beer, each costing only a $1 donation.
We even have a small serevice shop nearby called Southside Cycle that will repair all makes and not cheat you.
If I had a Vic dealer within 75 miles, my next bike would be a Vic.
 
#34 ·
This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society.[/I]

I can translate that for yah if you only habla Espanol :rolleyes:

Good thing it is not working for them.

The only change they might bring about is a reduction of tolerance for such insanity as they are exhibiting! ;)

FTR: I knew what OWS was, just wanted to see what kind of verbiage you would drag out!

Thanks! :thumbup:


.
 
#35 ·
Police departments are starting to look at Victory also and for some good reasons.

http://www2.tbo.com/news/plant-city...leys-in-favor-of-victory-motorcycl-ar-273306/

Like I told the Polaris/Victory rep for our region when she was in Pete's Cycle up in Bel Air, Maryland ......

When Victory at least has one franchise in this county or one adjacent to it I will give them serious consideration.

Then I turned to the General Manager of the store and asked " when you guys gonna bring in Victory Motorcycles? "

Me thinks a deal is in the works...I know the dealer has the permits to expand the physical store which they would have to do. But that is probably 2 maybe 3 years out.
 
#36 ·
There is a Victory dealership less than 10 miles from me. The new Vics look awesome, BUT the used Vics all look older and more worn than they are. Rust. Pitting chrome. Scratches on painted covers that have to often be removed to perform maintenance. Braided lines look like ass. This is just my observation, and maybe these bikes were mistreated, but every used Vic in the place seems to suffer from the same conditions...
I read this and quite honestly thought the same thing on a few occasions when seeing used Vics..... they just look worn and beat. Maybe, a few of them were neglected, but I can't think they all were. I also agree the new Vics looks great, really nice.... but just wonder how they will look in a few years. :dontknow: My Honda's look great and they are more than a few years old. My VTX was older than most of the Vics I saw and looked better (condition).

Now how about getting your sig pic changed to the Valk ....... 8)
 
#37 ·
This is precisely the kinda crap OWS wants to stop :rolleyes:
I kinda thought the occupy wall street crowd was just homeless people who'd organized. . . . :mrgreen:


As far as HD pushing smaller dealerships out of the way for big ones. . . :dontknow: sucks, but everyone is doing that. Why have 5 small shops that may or may not be able to showcase everything when you can just franchise and monitor one shop that has most everything. Sadly, it is what it is.
 
#38 ·
It looks to me like Victory is Harley Davidson's biggest threat nojoke. If they had a dealership near me I would consider a Victory as a second bike to keep my Wing company. Everything I read about the Victory CC is positive. Gobs of power and a comfortable ride. I wonder if the crank on the CC is a single pin design :dontknow:.
A real winner by an American company :bowdown:.
Actually the Victory brand is owned by Polaris, which is an international company with manufacturing plants in France, Mexico and other places for everything but the Vic motorcycles, which are made in MN, I believe. Point is that while Polaris is HQ'ed in MN, they are an international company.

Vic gets kudos for breaking the mold of bike styling since 2005, but their smaller, local dealers have been disappearing from my area. I'd have to travel about an hour, which becomes a bigger deal when it comes to dropping off the bike for warranty work. They are just not as ubiquitious as Harley, Honda, Yamaha, etc and therefore not quite as convenient.

With a Chevy, for example, I can travel as far as necessary to get a good deal, knowing that my local Chevy dealer will do the warranty work.

Doesn't mean I wouldn't own a Vic, however.
 
#39 ·
well.........

I live in an area where there are lots of working men and women under the age of 60 and yet the local Victory dealer quit selling bikes and just sell quads. The local Suzuki dealer closed his doors permanently a couple months back. The money crunch is taking a toll on businesses as well as individuals and I'm not to shocked to see HD trying to protect themselves. Guys that buy a couple thousand dollars worth of HD stuff and then selling it cheap on e-bay are torpedoing any local HD dealerships. I would imagine that e-bay sells a lot of stuff that has been stolen somewhere as well? They can't possibly edit every item and most of them don't have serial numbers?

When I walk into the Chevy dealer and have to pay something for a service I try and look at the people who will have a roof and food from my purchase. The service manger is a young man who has worked there since he was in high school and Linda and I have watched him grow into a fine person and he always is right there for me if I need something.

These are the people who are getting the short end of the stick after going to college and then trying to find a job. The major banks are sitting on a lot of money but, they don't want to lend it at any risk so some folks just can't get a car or an apartment or a new bike?

I have no idea where it is all headed but, I can't think that if 1% of the total population controls almost all of the money, we will continue to prosper. I read an article the other day that said that there are 15 million people out of work? That can't be good huh?

Six2go
 
#40 ·
There's definately something fishy going on, and it's not just with Harley-Davidson.

There's a large Honda dealer 25 miles from me and they also sell several other brands of bikes. They're dumping the Honda line. One of the sales guys tells me that Mother Honda is being "unreasonable". Not sure about the details. So, there is another dealer in the area that was looking to pick up that Honda franchise but I'm pretty sure that they've since decided against it.

Does anyone remember the recent trend in the automobile business where they said that they had too many dealerships and there were forcing some of them to just close up and go away? That happened to a couple dealers in our area.

:dontknow:
As you know, this forced consolidation is not unique to motorcycles. The US Government recently let Chrysler/Dodge and GM do the same thing - close a bunch of franchises that were not as profitable to the central corporation.

Gibson guitars has been systematically pulling their line of guitars out of mom 'n pop shops where you get the best customer service and placing them with big box retailers like Guitar Center and MusiciansFriend.com, leaving the mom n' pop shops with the offshore brand of Gibson and fewer real Gibson models that the shops are forced to pay more for. It's all about volume and the clout thise bigger retailers wield with manufacturers and the agreements they strike with them. Fender Music does some of the same by forcing the pruchase of A and B to get quanity discounts on C.
 
#41 ·
I have no idea where it is all headed but, I can't think that if 1% of the total population controls almost all of the money, we will continue to prosper. I read an article the other day that said that there are 15 million people out of work? That can't be good huh?

Six2go
I love all this 1% vs 99% stuff. I mean if some of the 99%'ers got their act together, managed their money better might they not become part of the 1%, making it 2% and so on. We need to stop blaming others for our own shortcomings. On the other hand so long as we keep electing the sort of people we seem to always elect, how can we expect things to be different? We can talk about the number of people who are out of work, but for some reason we do not talk about the jobs that are out there for which nobody applies. I am not talking about lettuce picking jobs, I am talking about skilled jobs on the midwest. We got carpenters on the east coast crying they cannot find a job, we got companies in Wyoming crying they cannot find a carpenter. I saw this discussed in another thread and gave it some though. If there is no work where you are, move to where there is work. There is work out there, it was on the news one night how many companies cannot get qualified people in their region, and nobody wants to move to where the work is. I guess it is easier to sit on ones ass where one is located and just complain.
 
#43 ·
Workers not where the jobs are...
I own my house (30 years)...just paided it off...but it is worth almost nothing compaired to what I have into it...
How could I sell it and move to a job thats 1,000 miles away...
 
#45 ·
Actually the Victory brand is owned by Polaris, which is an international company with manufacturing plants in France, Mexico and other places for everything but the Vic motorcycles, which are made in MN, I believe. Point is that while Polaris is HQ'ed in MN, they are an international company.

Vic gets kudos for breaking the mold of bike styling since 2005, but their smaller, local dealers have been disappearing from my area. I'd have to travel about an hour, which becomes a bigger deal when it comes to dropping off the bike for warranty work. They are just not as ubiquitious as Harley, Honda, Yamaha, etc and therefore not quite as convenient.

With a Chevy, for example, I can travel as far as necessary to get a good deal, knowing that my local Chevy dealer will do the warranty work.

Doesn't mean I wouldn't own a Vic, however.
Victory motorcycles are produced in Spirit Lake, IA.
As for warranty work, all I can say is of my three Vics, none have needed warranty work. Not to say that Vics are immune, but in my experience they are as reliable as any metric bike.
I am lucky in the fact that I have a dealer about 5 miles away, 2 more within 30 min, 3 within an hour and another 2 just over an hour away. So 8 dealers within easy access. :mrgreen:
 
#46 ·
The whole thing that HD is doing is called branding. They want all of their dealerships to look and feel the same. All franchises are the same way HD is just now getting a hold on it. When you walk into a McDonalds no matter where you are you know what to expect. If the smaller HD Dealers cannot comply or will not comply then they are weeded out. I was looking at opening a Victory Dealership and they were the same exact way.
 
#47 ·
Sounds like a marketing strategy for HD. They obviously want to get away from the "rebel" image they've had for so long, and project a more upper class image with the big, glitzy, family-friendly dealerships. Attract guys with a lot of money and not so much experience who are willing to pay for the "image" of having a HD in the garage next to the Beemer.
 
#48 ·
The whole thing that HD is doing is called branding. They want all of their dealerships to look and feel the same. All franchises are the same way HD is just now getting a hold on it. When you walk into a McDonalds no matter where you are you know what to expect. If the smaller HD Dealers cannot comply or will not comply then they are weeded out. I was looking at opening a Victory Dealership and they were the same exact way.
Yes, you know what the food will taste like, but McD's are like night and day across the country. In some towns, the McD's are modeled after old town buildings with roaring fireplaces and couches. So while a Harley is a Harley is a Harley just like Chevy, Honda, etc I don't think the MoCo would want all the dealerships to look, smell, and taste the same even if the product they sell does look/smell/taste the same.

However, I'm willing to bet that H-D would like to consolidate dealerships to ensure a certain market penetration in each market *and* to ensure the MoCo can be nearly guaranteed to sell those dealerships a certain amount of product yearly with a certain growth curve year after year.
 
#49 ·
I kinda thought the occupy wall street crowd was just homeless people who'd organized. . . . :mrgreen:


As far as HD pushing smaller dealerships out of the way for big ones. . . :dontknow: sucks, but everyone is doing that. Why have 5 small shops that may or may not be able to showcase everything when you can just franchise and monitor one shop that has most everything. Sadly, it is what it is.
Well, my small shop out sells a few of the bigger ones nearby and they got many more CVO bikes than teh bigger shops. Those only go out to dealers that can sell them fast and Pierce did that. They also had all the parts right there, another caveat of the dealership agreement, must carry a certain stock of parts at all times

The closest HD dealer to Pierce would be the dealer in my front yard, 27 miles away. That place is 3 years old and on it's second owner already. Pierce was family owned for over 50 years.
 
#50 ·
The situation with HD is not unique as some have already stated. Up here in Canada, the Honda 'PowerHouse' is about the only place left to get anything Honda. Some of the smaller cities have their smaller shops distributing Hondas, but I'm sure that would all change if the Powerhouse strategy works. I personally doubt it will. It inflates the price of the product and stifles competition. It's a lot harder to make up the profits of multiple lines with just one line.

Up here not all dealerships are 'franchises' in the traditional sense of the term, but are actually distributorships. Especially with the multiline dealers. In those cases, most distributor agreements are easily terminated by either party. There are requirements to be met by the distributors regarding product support and such, but in the end, if the supplier seeks a different sales channel, then the distributor will be given an agreed upon notice and the contract dissolves. This may not be true for HD dealers as they mostly (as required by HD), are single product line dealers. I'm not sure what the agreements are like in the US, but I cannot imagine how one would draft a franchising agreement when one business could be home to multiple franchises, especially when the multiple franchines have no synergy. The legalese would be staggering. :shock:

This is all to the best of my knowledge as it stands speaking to the few number of owners that I have had dialog with.
 
#51 ·
Well, my small shop out sells a few of the bigger ones nearby and they got many more CVO bikes than teh bigger shops. Those only go out to dealers that can sell them fast and Pierce did that. They also had all the parts right there, another caveat of the dealership agreement, must carry a certain stock of parts at all times

The closest HD dealer to Pierce would be the dealer in my front yard, 27 miles away. That place is 3 years old and on it's second owner already. Pierce was family owned for over 50 years.
Curious. What is going to happen to your local 'Mom & Pop' shop? Are they going to change brands, become a service operation only, or close the doors? Is H-D buying them out?

Regards,
Joe T.
 
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