Harley-Davidson Motorcycle’s FULL History | A Classic Car Documentary

deemed unnecessary, the quality of the

motorcycle

s also suffered as a result and sales declined. One positive thing that came out of the AMF era was the XR7 50 model, which debuted in 1970 and has more wins than any other

motorcycle

in ama racing. Evil Knievel famously rode this motorcycle to do his spooky stunts. Eventually, AMF realized that Harley-Davidson was simply not a good fit for its company, so in 1981 the company was sold to a group of investors for $80 million. One of the key investors in this group was Willie G Davidson, the grandson of co-founder William A Davidson, once it was back in Davidson's hands the quality of the motorcycles increased dramatically.

Willy's first challenge to beat the competition with the Japanese and the only way to prevent the company from being defeated by foreign manufacturers was to go all the way. to the top. In 1983, Harley-Davidson asked President Ronald Reagan to impose tariffs on imports of motorcycles 700 CC or larger. Reagan increased import taxes from 4 to 49. This massive import tax was enough to hurt Japan's motorcycle sales. During a speech he gave to Harley-Davidson employees, Reagan said that they are betting against the United States itself and that is a bet that no one will ever win. that tariff worked. Harley-Davidson became a publicly traded company in 1986 and they continued to grow and make millions of dollars year after year into the 1990s.

Fat Boy was designed by Willie Davidson, was written by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 and sold like hot bread. Harley-Davidson reached its peak sales in 2006 when it sold more than 260,000 motorcycles in the United States and made a billion dollar profit and for a short time it seemed that they were out of the woods and yet would only continue to grow . After the Great Recession of 2008 people were no longer splurging on buying a motorcycle, the average cost of a Harley is about twenty thousand dollars and it is simply not as practical as driving a car, few people could afford to justify buying which was essentially an expensive toy.

Harley-Davidson's stock price plummeted during the recession and today, years later, the company has never

full

y recovered since Millennials entered the workforce at such a difficult time, very few of them have purchased motorcycles , so the average age of a Harley-Davidson owner has increased. As its core fan base ages, the company is trying to attract a younger audience and is even launching an electric bike called the live wire, but only time will tell if Harley Davidson can attract a younger audience for the long haul. tour like this. It may be a truly life-or-death moment for the company, but they are no strangers to pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, no matter what.

One thing is clear. Harley-Davidson will always live on as an iconic American brand that set a permanent milestone. check in History thanks for watching and if you want to see more videos like this, consider watching this video right here which you can watch on Evil Knievel right now, subscribe and hit the bell icon to get notified for more videos like this. one see you in the next one.