If Harley made scooters today would you buy one?  By  bigggroovy (Read 4,594 times)

My Dad would have slapped me upside the head for going with Harley instead of an Indian like he used to ride.

My Lance was called a Piglett by the Harley Crowd. I wonder if they would call a scooter made by Indian a Squaw.

After following behind my Aprilia Sport City on a winding road the Harley crowd only wants to know how much does it cost and where can they get one.

Heck, Vespa has made a pile dishing out the retro look. Why not Harley-Davidson?

I wouldn't buy an HD scooter. It would probably be over priced, under powered and ridiculously expensive to modify.

Back in '60's-'70's there was a surge of motorcycle/motorscooter. H-D rebadged small motorcycles and scooters. Lost money.

Currently, Harley-Davidson sells more than 50% of all 1000cc cruiser motorcycles. *ALL* other manufacturers combined sell less than 50%. H-D makes money building and selling big cruisers. Why would they want to lose money selling little scooters?

I was down to the Harley Dealer for parts for my Savage, come out and 3-4 people admiring my scooter. It is a lightweight 652cc single cylinder motor, just 380 pounds wet. It is roughly the same as the little 883 Sportster, 'cept the Sportster is over 550 pounds wet and has two cylinders. There are not enough people wanting a Thumper for H-D to engineer and produce, let alone a little scooter.

H-D is not going to produce a scooter.
I would not buy a scooter at the H-D dealer.

I needed a replacement for my dead Savage. Wanted a lightweight city bike, tested the Vespa LX150 and found that it can do freeways, so I bought one.

I am in Gardena. My nearest Vespa Dealer is Honda of Santa Monica, about 12 miles away. They sell and service Honda, Kawasaki, KTM, Kymco, and Piaggio/Vespa. Their mechanics work on motorcycles, and also scooters, at times, rarely.

I bought from Vespa of Sherman Oaks, about 26 miles away. For service I go and will contiue go to Vespa of Sherman Oaks because they only sell and service Piaggio vehicles. They know what they are doing. I do not want a motorcycle mechanic working on my motorscooter.

They can't manufacture and sell scooters for anything considered reasonable prices. Union costs and pension costs pretty much force them to sell only big iron nowadays. Worse they would have to compete with the cheap Chinese imports too. So they just will not do it. A HD branded 80cc scooter would probably sell for $5000. If they actually tried to make it.

The last big thing HD did was buy Buell out and then they quickly discontinued it as they couldn't make and sell the bikes like Buell did for those prices.

Years ago HD tried importing cheaper bikes made in Italy and that worked for a while. But they couldn't compete with the Japanese after a while and they gave up the smaller bike market to the Japanese.

The scooter market tends to follow the gasoline price fluctuations. When gas prices go up higher, people get interested in scooters. When the gas prices go down people lose interest in scooters. So it pretty much kills the market to sell scooters. You can look and see the limited offerings from the Japanese manufacturers to see that they don't see much of a market selling scooters.

I had Harleys,,
They are over rated,,granted they sound good when they idle,,but for me,,I would never buy another junk Harley,,your better off strapping two 10 hp briggs to a frame,,a huge percentage of your money goes into building their fancy buildings and extravagant showrooms,,,no thanks,,too big for their britches.
Now a Honda is a different story,,we all know they are the best