Valheru Rides!

For those who haven’t seen the latest mildly deranged promotional video which Indian Motorcycles’ put out last week I am going to spare you pain. It’s essentially Indian trying to poke fun at Harley-Davidson for various different reasons but, in what is a decidedly shitty way.

I freely admit I was no fan of HD appointing their current CEO fresh from a background of Pizza and Golf, in fact I even wrote a blog post bitching about it here. Some of the major differences being I am a random motorcycle rider on the internet who has about 5 people reading their inane ramblings and, not an actual company building and selling motorcycles across the globe.

We then had a mildly strange comment about moving production overseas, because what company hasn’t done that (answers on a postcard)to remain competitive with the rise of Indian and Chinese motorcycles? Under Polaris the FTR was built and assembled in Poland, so what’s the big deal? A weirder comment still about electric bikes, but with no real details…

But the absolute worst was the comment about “embracing DEI” like it was somehow a bad thing for women, minorities and members of the LGBTQ+ to ride motorcycles. If anything they should really have put the boot in about how HD ditched those policies after a few gents of the usual genre decided to start shooting their motorcycles. Now I’m not a member of that community as an old straight white guy, but I have a few of the lovely folk (mostly of Bluesky) as friends on social media, and they seem to bloody love motorcycles. What would they rather they bought? A Tesla????

This whole approach of puerile mudslinging just damages both brands and plays straight into the arms of their many competitors, who are now shipping smaller displacement bikes into the US en masse. The latest rumour surrounding the Kawasaki W175 among others.

Hang on, haven’t we been here before in the past?I’m just trying to remember how that went last time…..

Never go full stupid.

So how should Harley-Davidson respond if it’s not by slinging its own mud back? Build a 649cc Sportster that doesn’t weigh an absolute ton and slips in on the A2 licence bracket. I’m pretty sure most 19 year olds who fancy themselves a fan of cruisers would be absolutely lapping them up, rocking up to a Friday night bike meet with your new Sportster like an absolute chad.

Sadly they probably won’t do that, and I expect this spat to continue given the current climate for discourse, but we can only hope, right?