Date: 2024-07-17 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00022149
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HARLEY DAVIDSON
Video: How Harley-Davidson Killed Itself ... If Harley Davidson is the Titanic, the pandemic might just be that one big iceberg.
HARLEY DAVIDSON
Video: How Harley-Davidson Killed Itself ... If Harley Davidson is the Titanic, the pandemic might just be that one big iceberg.
Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOwxxsPaogY
Burgess COMMENTARY
When I was young I followed engineering trends quite closely. In the early 1950s the Norton was the racing bike that was winning the big races in the UK, but then Honda from Japan came on the scene and started winning races.
I remember talking to a young engineer who worked at the BSA factory in the UK. He had been tasked with pulling apart a Honda motor bike to identify engineering differences that made it so good. The answer was very simply. All the Honda parts were being made to a far tighter precision than was being done at the BSA plant, or, for that matter, at any of the British factories.
This observation came at around the time that the British automobile industry was going through a series of consolidations. This included the Leyland company that specialized in heavy commercial vehicles taking over some of the major British car companies. I remember engineers from Leyland being surprised that the Leyland factories operated at a far higher level of precision than the car factories that were now under their control. For a while British cars improved when production tolerances were tightened, but the improvement was short-lived because a lot more needed to be fixed.
I have always been surprised by the popularity of the Harley Davidson motor bike and all its 'retro' design features. It almost seems like the Harley symbolizes a long gone womderful yesterday ... something akin to escapism. The fact that Harley sales dropped significantly after the Great Recession of 2008 seems to support this thesis. The Great Recession cased a huge reduction in the discretionary buying power of almost everyone in the United States. and it has not improved that much in the subsequent years.
Peter Burgess
3,573,358 views
May 17, 2020 (Accessed April 2022)
FortNine ... 1.43M subscribers
If Harley Davidson is the Titanic, the pandemic might just be that one big iceberg. Worse still, it had a hole in the hull and sputtering engines before all this even began. Damn. Is HD done for? [Details below]
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