Indian vs Harley,Triumph vs BMW

Just read a interesting statistic on Triumph marketing on their Tiger model against GS 1200 BMW, it has halved there market in Australia! In 1991 your webmaster was at the launch of the resurrected Triumph at the Cologne show in Germany they were directly opposite the BMW stand, even then I could see they were aiming for BMW riders  with their Trophy range the CEO BMW welcomed the return of Triumph  little knowing how in the future how  their market  worldwide would be effected I bet they regret that welcome now. So what’s this got to do with Indian, plenty it’s a bit like the “Mouse that Roared” skeptical types laugh that Indian will not ever be able to match H-D, sorry they have a multi billon dollar company company behind them with Polaris, their share price is $125 against Harley’s  $7.00 & they have a larger network throughout the world , they are “gunning for H-D”.Harley is severely under threat with old tech engines Indian is testing brand new engines that won’t have design flaws that can’t be changed because of buyer resistance. In my 40 years in the trade I have seen trends range from cafe-racers to scooters, then to choppers onto big -bore Jap bikes, then American cruisers, Euro cafe-racers & now scooters again! A couple of years back Wille G Davidson said that one of his major problems was not the japaneese machines, but a more pressing problem was earlier model H-Ds that were a couple of years old and were selling with low mileage at half the price, so much for the “Solid Gold” campaign the motor company ran a decade ago. This coupled with the fact that Willie G is retiring is probably about as bad as Steve Jobs dying in the Apple Company, goodluck H-D you will need it. The 2 adverts above are now in the Period Adverts area of this site along with many others recently added, there are other areas that are updated regularly including the Trading Post check them out as well