Wonder if the Rushmore water cooling might be an excellent example of being both an innovation and a wasted effort at the same time. There's a lot to be gained from it. But the design Harley came out with, wow. It's neither fish nor fowl.

 

HOG? Really? You think HOG is the number one positive change made by the MOCO?

 

Positive change: EVO motor
Wasted change: Boom infotainment radio

 

Yes. If they had not created the Owner Experience the company would have died long ago.

 

So they survived for 80 years without HOG but they would have died "LONG" ago without it? What are you 25?

 

Best change(s):
1. AMF saving them from bankruptcy and modernizing the factory.
2. Regaining control from AMF to avoid backruptcy.

Worst:
The whole Buell business

 

Best is sweet combination of a 6 speed transmission, 6 gallon tank and the 103 engine.

Worst is the stock seat on a street glide. Unacceptable passenger section.

 

Nope, not 25. Been riding for 50 years. Until 1965 I knew nothing about HD so I can't speak to the "early years" of innovation. I do remember the AMF years.

In 1983 two significant things happened, that in my mind, saved the company.

Harley Owners Group was created
President Reagan granted a 5 year self liquidating tariff to HD to protect them from the Japanese inroads to the heavyweight MC segment.

Innovation is not always about technology. It is sometimes culture, marketing or assembly line related.

Teerlink said it better than I can:


“Our sale is based on the hardware, but is much more than that. Harley-Davidson doesn’t sell transportation, we sell transformation. We sell excitement, a way of life. We had to give the people a way to transform themselves. But a motorcycle, inherently an irrational device, need not be flawless. Indeed one of the reasons people buy bikes is to get away from the increasingly over sanitized way of life, to take some risks, to hone skills in a world that more and more doesn’t want us to do such things”.

 

Really?? How "winter" is it???

 

About half of the accessories catalog feels like "wasted effort"to me, lol. Our maybe its just "wasted money"