For HD, being acquired by Honda or another larger company provides the benefit of a big payday for the stockholders and particularly the managers who have clauses in their compensation packages that will award them royally if the company is sold

Those you with long memories will recall that HD owned and RV manufacturer that it sold off in the mid 90′s. The concept was to build a motor recreation business in a couple of segments that would have some synergy. The RV acquisistion was HD’s attempt to bolster the company against an eventural down turn in the MC market, but the synergies never developed and HD sold off the RV biz.

The talk of Ducati and earlier KTM acquisitions is likely HD’s management attempting to make a bet on where growth will in the industry they know, motorcycles. For Honda owning HD would be a way to tap into a profitable, if not fast growing, revenue stream in a mature market that it also knows. Honda also has the resources in place to quickly deploy the HD brand in Asia, something the HD is only begining to do.

HD is a mature business in a mature market, but since it is publically traded is subject to the grow or die ethos of Wall Street. Also consider as a corporation HD is much smaller than the other major brands when you consider they are in multiple lines of business. Get used to this talk shield and bar fans it won’t go away soon.

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Richard – I might not go that far (yet), but the HD Product line-up 20+ years from now will be very interesting.

Think about 20 yrs of R&D thrown at the Tesla electric supercar & battery technology. Consider how that tech could be applied to motorcycles. As much as I enjoy the HD Deluxe & Road King, an electric-powered Road King just doesn’t have that appeal, does it?

Ok, so the great i-c engine can still be built in the coming decades, but what will the price of gas be & its impact on consumer choices? Enough to diminish sales? probably….and how far will those sales dip without some other models to fill the gap?

So, what is on the HD Product Planners 20+ yr. forecast? Similarly, what is on NASCAR’s outlook? An electric, high performance F1 car maintains more appeal than an electric stock car.

Harley Davidson – the 1st One Hundred Years.
Harley Davidson – the next One hundred Years ?

The above notion can be applied to all of our beloved marques….Moto Guzzi, HD, Ducati, Buell, Triumph, BMW, etc. These are going to be interesting times.

Anyway, I was serious about what I said the other day about HD buying Royal Enfield*. Asia (where 4,000,000,000 folks live) is going middle class, and RE is poised to become the HD of Asia. The product line-ups and customer profiles are highly complimentary.

BTW, for those of you who haven’t been following RE, they are currently running the factory three shifts and there are waiting lists for the bikes.

Tom

*I think this acquisition would actually be prevented by Indian law, but it’s still an interesting idea.

I think the “writing is on the wall” for HD. Their target audience is dying off through old age and due to the recent surge in single vehicle crashes as they scoot along from bar to bar, and it’s likely to be at least 20 years before another nostalgia frenzy creates a new generation of “ride free or die” wannabees. It’s only a matter of time before they are forced to go through some kind of major restructuring of their business.

Always “follow the money” when looking for the truth behind the rumors. In this case, I suspect that HD’s abysmal performance was making the stock slump and they wanted to boost it for a while, so out came the merger rumors. You might want to look into whose stock option package benefited from the recent stock price surge. Did any insiders just happen to sell off some stock?