It is with a heavy heart that I must report that Harley Davidson is woke now.
They’re changing to Harley David-daughter
Harley last year ditched its globally iconic logo of orange and white lettering on a black shield. Its new logo is an empty metallic shell – the same shape, but different colors and no words.
lol wtf, their logo was basically the biggest thing they had going for them. It’s going to be hilarious to see them rebranding themselves into the ground, since they can’t figure out that only boomer hogs buy their hogs
it’s been hilarious to watch them fumble over and over again. They keep teasing new bikes that might appeal to people under 65 and look fun to ride, then cancelling them because all the retirees who trailer their bikes to Sturgis got mad about them. Once their base dies out (or stops being able to ride) they’ve got nowhere to turn.
I don’t really keep up with this stuff, but from what I’ve heard, that’s why they had to spin off the LiveWire bikes into their own brand, the boomers flipped out over an ELECTRIC Harley.
Yeah that’s absolutely it. Bike no make potato sound, WOKE!!
edit: it’s sad since the Livewire seems like a very good electric motorcycle, if exorbitantly expensive.
Once their base dies out (or stops being able to ride) they’ve got nowhere to turn.
Good thing their product kills them off at an above average rate.
This cycle has been going since the 1980s! Every time Harley tries to break out with something that’s actually decent they have to cancel it because their own “fan base” won’t accept anything that doesn’t look like it’s still operating on 1940s technology. Most recently Harley released an electric motorcycle (the Live Wire) but they actually managed to sell more of them after they took the HD branding off.
Harley Theyvidson
Overpriced TBI machine has gone woke because it respects black people.
If Harley is smart, they’ll lean super hard into this.
I’m serious. The kinds of people who are mad about this hang around HD’s neck like a one ton albatross. The reason fewer young people are riding is precisely because we don’t want to be associated with the stereotypical Harley rider, and even Millennials like me who got into motorcycles anyway will buy literally anything but a Harley because of the association.
Harley changing its image would be a painful process, but it’s absolutely necessary if they don’t want to continue the slow fade out that they’ve been doing the past few decades. Of course I don’t think they’ll do it - these accusations are totally baseless, Harley isn’t trying to reinvent itself it’s just trying to figure out how to squeeze its aging fanbase harder and harder, a strategy that looks better quarter to quarter but will only cause the cliff they eventually fall off to be higher.
Yeah, I agree. It’s amazing to me how much opportunity they’ve wasted. When flat tracker builds saw a resurgence after the cafe racer craze, Harley could have had an absolute lock on that market by selling an xr750 look-alike with a fiberglass tail section, tracker bars, and 18"/19" wheel combo. Literally just slapping some different plastic, bars, and rear wheel onto the Sportster - they would have sold tons of them. The new pan america is the absolute slightest shift towards making a bike that people spending $15k on motorcycles in 2024 might want, a big comfortable softroader tourer, and predictably the harley t-shirt wearers got mad as hell about it and still side eye the bikes when they see them.
Reminds me a little bit of Porsche and their customers raging at any divergence from the air cooled rear engine format, but Porsche wised up, ignored them, and now they sell sedans and SUVs and they sell a lot of them.
