111’s are becoming common, & Scrap steel is $30 a ton

One of the many IIRA members Dave Morgan from the N.T and his new 111

I took a visit to Indian in Elizabeth St last Saturday to see how they were going despatching all the pre ordered 111’s they were over 140 and still had heaps to go. Sadly an eager customer was standing wanting to order one and unfortunately will have to wait till April for a Chief Vintage, although I believe a few Chieftan’s are still available now. One thing I was told was that they are now accepting trade-ins and not surprisingly all those ” Solid Gold” Harley-Ferguson Owners are realizing scrap steel is worth $30 a ton and are the most offered bike as a trade-in, and not many people want them as they are “a dime a dozen” Just Bikes Magazine and Motorcycle Trader Magazine will attest to this as well by flicking through the pages of current editions Just Bikes 165 pages had a minimum of two on each page sometimes up to five. In 1972 BSA went broke with full order books for bikes they could not afford to make, Harley make 245,000 units a year and are required to make at least 190,000 to break-even, Indian is only making 15,000 units this year with double to triple these figures over the next couple of years, in theory 50,000 Indian’s could break H-D. There is a hell of a lot of H-D’s around at the moment and they are trying to sell into new markets such as India to increase sales volumes, this could be a sign of cracks as the V-Rod was supposed to be a savior but was not, they need every sale to count, Polaris has a small stake in the motorcycle industry that Victory & Indian is a mere 4.5% of their company returns, the next couple of years may see H-D in the same position as BSA