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Remington seeks financing to file for bankruptcy

Too bad they can't do what Harley-Davidson did. The employees basically bought the company.

I don't know how, but they must have mediately mortgaged the whole business to raise capital. Anyhow they kept the doors open and they've been going ever since the end of the AMF debacle.
 
Well everything good has to come to an end, but they kept the doors open a lot longer than I expected.

Unfortunately Harleys were never as carefree as many other motorcycles. They are terrific bikes if you are a mechanic and you want a piece of quality Equipment to work on.

But all that comes with high cost that the average consumer simply won't pay in the form of purchase price or maintenance.

If Harley was smart they would build the first electric American Cruiser motorcycle, which carried an emergency recharge capacity. It would be a total change in image for them, but the days that Harley celebrates are numbered.

Our local PD buys them for ceremonial duties but the patrol officers ride German and Japanese motorcycles.
 
Sadly this seems typical for to many American companies that are consumed by buyout companies like Cerebus. They will milk every penny to pay investors while running up debt that is not sustainable. We just had over 20 years of the best civilian guns sales in the history of the country. There is no other reason for this. Cerebus had a choice. Run Remington responsibly and reap steady profits for a long time or bleed it out, grab the cash and let the carcass to a bankruptcy court. Hopefully we will get some changes that would make that kind of operating more painful but I doubt it.

I live an hour from the York, PA Harley plant and know people that have worked there. They said years ago that Harley was over producing for their market. They made dealers take more bikes than they could sell and it's coming back to bite them now. I took a tour of the plant once with an engineers group. It was really cool to watch. Some people in the tour had travelled there from 15 hours away. It was like going to Mecca for them. They spent a ton in the after tour gift shop they funnel you through. I think those folks are getting older and not being replaced. History is littered with once historical companies. I hope Harley does something to change that but it will be hard after they have resisted change for so long.
 
It's sad, but probably inevitable. The younger riders for the most part want quick, nimble, reliable bikes.
 
Everything old is New Again.

My great-grandkids will want to buy HDs because they will be nostalgia items yet again.
 
. . . it will be hard after they have resisted change for so long.

Harley thinks that they can shape what American motorcycling should be, based on their image of what they wish it were.

One of the things they should not think it should be is the purview of well-to-do people (and those who will do anything for the privilege.)

Unfortunately they operate as if they didn't know.

This is not what motorcycling is about, and certainly not in the face of economic hard times.

When Harley decided to get into the less-expensive markets they used foreign manufacturers and just rebadged their products.

What Harley should have done is what every American car manufacturer has done.

They sell a whole lot of inexpensive models in order to offer the attractive luxury models to the upper market. The economies of mass marketing would not otherwise allow such a limited number of Fine Cars to be built at any kind of a reasonable price.

If instead of trying to engineer the V-Rod to be the Porsche of V-Twin motorcycles, Harley-Davidson should have taken a socially-responsible stance of producing the American Motorcycle version of the 2CV.

An adaptable inexpensive reliable utilitarian vehicle which is Affordable to the masses and with engineering that outclasses anything else available.

Instead HD was blinded by their ego and wasted of ton of money trying to improve the engineering of a physically encumbered century-old design, that the customers of that bike didn't really want changed at all.

The glory of Harley-Davidson is that you could mix and match so many parts from so many years because it didn't change much. People love that!

That design was already serving a Market it was designed for quite well, and the only thing Harley needed to do to improve the v twins was to build them more efficiently.
 
When Kawasaki built the ZX-14 it could be had for about $14K off the showroom floor and run a 9.8 quarter mile at about 155-160 mph. Harley teamed up with Vance and Hines to build a similarly performing V-Rod. They came close to the same performance, but the bike was really not very streetable, and it cost $31K.

The ZX-14 was just a god awful fast street bike. Then there was the Suzuki Hayabusa as well. Another $14K rocket from Japan. Either one of those bikes built to the tune of $31K would be capable of mid 8s with a good rider.

When I bought my Nomad I considered a Harley, a Yamaha V-4, and the Nomad. The Nomad was about $6K less than the comparable Harley. 93,000 miles and I have replaced a shock absorber and an ambient air sensor for the fuel injection. Neither left me stranded alongside the road. Oh, I also did the cam chain tensioner mod at 71,000 miles.

When I bought the Nomad I found one at a small dealership west of Omaha for $11,500.00 out the door. I think I did good.
 
Soo, if Remington were to actually go bankrupt and go out of business there would be no Marlins either
 
They will be probably still be around but smaller. If Marlin is still profitable it will hang around too.
 
Yeah the whole thing was just a total mistake on Harley-Davidsons part.

If they want to be a backbone American company they need to deliver to the American people the way that Henry Ford did when he produced the Model T.

A long time ago American marketing companies decided that you can't actually sell the American Consumer what he needs, because what he really wants you to sell him is a dream that doesn't exist. They've been marketing dreams ever since.

Somebody at Harley needs to buck that piece of non-wisdom and do what America needs, instead of creating expensive egotistical celebrations of the past.

Success can be about selling the world what it doesn't need, because you can create a desire that never existed before.

Here, the need and desire is for something that has never been created before; and the opportunity exists but it is not being filled by any American company.

Now I remember when the Segway first came along, and the promoters said that the Local transportation world would be recreated around the Segway because it was so marvelous.

The problem is that while riding a motorcycle at 60 miles an hour can be thrilling, riding a Segway at 30 miles an hour is almost horrifying.

Plus, the rider knows that it depends on batteries and computer magic and electronics to prevent you from face planting into the ground at high speed.

Most people don't have a clue what electricity is, & are certainly not going to put that kind of faith in it.

The simplest motorcycle can negotiate the roughst Terrain with an experienced rider. It goes thru a skinny hole too.

So while the Segway may be fun it is expensive and limited and certainly not the mass transportation Revolution that is designers imagined.

You see, that already exists, and anybody can see it if they simply watch a video of downtown Saigon. The problem is to get rid of the smog, not figure out how to make the world's most unstable vehicle artificially stable by electronic computer Magic.

Harley-Davidson could put a bike on every porch in America if they had enough brains to shed their ego and grow a little business sense. The bike is an as gyroscopically stable as the Segway is unstable.
 
I had almost forgotten about the Segway. I do see one from time to time at a mall with a security guard cruising around. I remember back in the late 50s early 60s everyone was going to have a flying car in their garages.

Look how long the Volkswagen was around before American auto manufacturers tried to build something that would actually compete with it. Americans wanted big luxurious cars with lots of power. Smog was pretty much a big city problem back then, and was a combination of manufacturing, power generation, and autos. Of course we did not have 330 million people living here either.

Anyway, back to Remington. Hopefully they will come out of this stronger than before.
 
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