Harley-Davidson faces 'woke' accusations from Sturgis bikers: 'Breaks my heart' | Fox News
Harley-Davidson faces 'woke' accusations from Sturgis bikers: 'Breaks my heart' | Fox News
Iconic American motorcycle's muscular image and value of its bikes face headwinds
It is with a heavy heart that I must report that Harley Davidson is woke now. 
They’re changing to Harley David-daughter
Harley last year ditched its globally iconic logo of orange and white lettering on a black shield. Its new logo is an empty metallic shell – the same shape, but different colors and no words.
lol wtf, their logo was basically the biggest thing they had going for them. It's going to be hilarious to see them rebranding themselves into the ground, since they can't figure out that only boomer hogs buy their hogs
it's been hilarious to watch them fumble over and over again. They keep teasing new bikes that might appeal to people under 65 and look fun to ride, then cancelling them because all the retirees who trailer their bikes to Sturgis got mad about them. Once their base dies out (or stops being able to ride) they've got nowhere to turn.
This cycle has been going since the 1980s! Every time Harley tries to break out with something that's actually decent they have to cancel it because their own "fan base" won't accept anything that doesn't look like it's still operating on 1940s technology. Most recently Harley released an electric motorcycle (the Live Wire) but they actually managed to sell more of them after they took the HD branding off.
Holy shit that new logo looks incredibly lazy. It's really bad, folks. I don't even like Harleys but I'm mad about it
Lmao they could charge $100 for a t shirt if it had that logo on it and the titans of industry decided to change that logo.
Harley Theyvidson
Overpriced TBI machine has gone woke because it respects black people.
If Harley is smart, they'll lean super hard into this.
I'm serious. The kinds of people who are mad about this hang around HD's neck like a one ton albatross. The reason fewer young people are riding is precisely because we don't want to be associated with the stereotypical Harley rider, and even Millennials like me who got into motorcycles anyway will buy literally anything but a Harley because of the association.
Harley changing its image would be a painful process, but it's absolutely necessary if they don't want to continue the slow fade out that they've been doing the past few decades. Of course I don't think they'll do it - these accusations are totally baseless, Harley isn't trying to reinvent itself it's just trying to figure out how to squeeze its aging fanbase harder and harder, a strategy that looks better quarter to quarter but will only cause the cliff they eventually fall off to be higher.
Also, Harleys are ridiculously overpriced and two to three generations behind everyone else.
Yeah, I agree. It's amazing to me how much opportunity they've wasted. When flat tracker builds saw a resurgence after the cafe racer craze, Harley could have had an absolute lock on that market by selling an xr750 look-alike with a fiberglass tail section, tracker bars, and 18"/19" wheel combo. Literally just slapping some different plastic, bars, and rear wheel onto the Sportster - they would have sold tons of them. The new pan america is the absolute slightest shift towards making a bike that people spending $15k on motorcycles in 2024 might want, a big comfortable softroader tourer, and predictably the harley t-shirt wearers got mad as hell about it and still side eye the bikes when they see them.
Reminds me a little bit of Porsche and their customers raging at any divergence from the air cooled rear engine format, but Porsche wised up, ignored them, and now they sell sedans and SUVs and they sell a lot of them.
death to prosche. gulag anyone who buys a porsche
Easy Rider is a shitty movie and the boomer motorcycle will die with them.
Rip or whatever, losers
Fuckin' hilarious. The company that coasted on it's legacy image for decades but the private equity firms that own them now probably realize that it's primary market of overweight, knuckle dragging, mid-life crisis boomers is dying off and they have to pivot. I mean, just look at those crowd photos of the Sturgis rally.
People don’t even want to be associated with Harley anymore,
That's the effect of your primary boomer market. Nobody wants to associate with those chuds. The brand is damned if they do, damned if they don't. (Even though by the articles own description, they really don't).
A vintage Harley valued at $30,000 just a few years ago is now getting only $4,000.
So those overvalued bikes are now starting to come to earth because of the dying off effect, and the younger generations don't identify with the brand enough to pay those kind of exorbitant prices, but the elder chuds think it's because of woke.
Many folks, chud and otherwise, really don't grasp that when private equity swoops in, your cherished brand is nothing more than intellectual property playthings and the owners don't give a flying fuck about the undeserved loyalty of it's fanbase.
I can't believe that overcharging for an inferior product for multiple decades, to the point where you're charging $100 for a long sleeve cotton shirt, isn't a sustainable business model.
Truly, who could have guessed being able to buy a massively superior alternative for 1/4 of the price isn't a great business strategy.
If you buy a Harley you're paying for the privellage of having to associate with people who think Harleys are cool, so unless you wanna hear a dozen jokes that the punchline is just saying a slur, you can easily save 20 grand.
Their only redeeming quality is it's hard to get them to go fast enough to be deadly and most people tip over at a stoplight rather than tomahawking though the woods for 100 yards when they don't countersteer a gentle curve doing 90 in a 35.
Their only redeeming quality is it's hard to get them to go fast enough to be deadly
I mean, it's a funny sentiment but it's not really true since the Evo motors came out. Also, nobody's not countersteering at speed, even people who claim they don't are all countersteering they just don't understand that it's what they're doing.
I like how American outlaw biker culture is just a bunch of old angry guys who mald on social media over products. The Japanese bikers seem to be a lot scarier cause they were basically the youth wing of the yakuza
These aren't "outlaw" bikers.
I didn't see any concrete action HD took to be labeled as "woke" in that article. Is this literally just vibes?
Anyway couldn't have happened to a better company. Wait a couple of years and get a discount road king if you're into that sort of thing.
Some nobody ("robby starbuck" lol) claims they're doing DEI with absolutely no evidence, and also they changed the H-D logo
Basically imaginary wokeness
I think there's a little more to it which is that HD is clearly dying and has been on life support for a while and the chuds want to blame something and someone for it. The truth is just that they're not bringing to market the kinds of bikes most riders want - big expensive touring bikes have their market but a new rider will never buy one, you gotta bring them on board with something relatively cheap and simple and in that category HD hasn't been competitive since the 1950s.
Aka "i went into a Harley dealership and there was a Mexican working there" (Todd just got back from a week long beach vacation)
Wokin' that Hog! 
Wow so in the embedded video they are interviewing chuds from Sturgis and I guess they have donald trump on the phone answering questions, and like the first guy was like "Yeah how are you gonna lower the rent because my kids can't afford the rent" and obviously trump had no response. Sturgis most ridiculous looking people though like JFC
Lmao I clicked on the link for "Woke Wishlist" and it just directed me to this picture that says "WOKE" on it https://www.foxnews.com/category/topic/woke
