If it wasn't for Harley

**Bonez** · 13th February 2008, 15:48

Originally Posted by scumdog

Yeah but the tarrif only applied to 750cc+ sized bikes..

Over 700cc IIRC. The bikes the HD where competing with, in otherwords large capacity motorcycles which the US market loves.

It's all history now anyway. I for one am glad there is such a vast range of m/cs to choose from. No excuse for not finding the "right one".

**madandy** · 13th February 2008, 15:58

If it were'nt for HD there'd be no VRSCDX for me to want so bad! [thanks to Porsche for the engine architecture too

]

**HenryDorsetCase** · 13th February 2008, 19:39

Originally Posted by Bonez

Over 700cc IIRC. The bikes the HD where competing with, in otherwords large capacity motorcycles which the US market loves.

It's all history now anyway. I for one am glad there is such a vast range of m/cs to choose from. No excuse for not finding the "right one".

the tariff applied to every road bike over 700cc sold in the states. there were a couple of good reasons for it, basically waving the red white and blue in the early 80's was good politics, and having HD go tits up (particularly just after the management buyout) wouldnt have been the good look. So the selective tariff was a band aid to allow HD to "compete" while they got their shit together. Which they did, and the first salvo of that was the Evolution engine in 1984 (?). The rest as they say is history.

Interesting factoid which I read somewhere was that at one time (I think after the tariff was lifted) one in every two road motorcycles over 750cc sold in the US was a HD.

I have my Cycle and Cycle World magazines from that era, I must have a look thru.

The latest sales figures I recollect (IIRC) were something like 600000 plus bikes sold in the US, and 250000 bikes sold in "rest of world". something like that. I will see if I can dig out the figures I saw, they were quite instructive.