Who’s Surprised?

Polaris dropped a big #2 on the cruiser market this week with their announcement that Victory is a has-been. “Polaris Industries Inc. (NYSE: PII) today announced it will immediately begin winding down its Victory Motorcycles brand and related operations. Polaris will assist dealers in liquidating existing inventories while continuing to supply parts for a period of 10 years, along with providing service and warranty coverage to Victory dealers and owners.”

Blowing a little smoke up their fans and vanishing customers’ asses, they followed that in the formal announcement with “Several factors influenced today’s announcement. Victory has struggled to establish the market share needed to succeed and be profitable. The competitive pressures of a challenging motorcycle market have increased the headwinds for the brand. Given the significant additional investments required for Victory to launch new global platforms that meet changing consumer preferences, and considering the strong performance and growth potential of Indian Motorcycle, the decision to more narrowly focus Polaris’ energy and investments became quite clear.” Don’t hold your breath for Indian to last long. Polaris has been hustling too little, too late, with almost no future market awareness for years. Me-too is not a business plan.
Their customers were buying a vintage image, now it’s a vintage product and brand. They ought to feel “special.”

Image Is Everything

A Victory seat and luggage cover set that cost more
than both of my motorcycles. 

Years ago, I worked for a company that had the usual riff-raff for a CEO. He came to work late, mostly hung out with the cute secretaries (which were the only active hires in which he involved himself) for the few moments he was in the office, flew himself all over the country pretending to be doing "marketing" (while he scoped out other execs' secretaries), and took weeks off every few months to recover from mystical "backpain" (those CEO-free periods were always the most productive and profitable months of the year. One of the many irritating "truths" this guy taught me was "perception is everything." This is, of course, only true because consumers (humans unfit to be called "citizens") are idiots. Even worse, they are lazy idiots.

Like most of the things I've learned about my fellow humans, this is not good news for anyone but those who prey on fools. The idea that reality has no basis for comparison and verification is exactly like claiming "If I say it is, it is." The inspiration for this rant came to me when my brand new subscription to Rolling Stone appeared in the mailbox and on the page after "Correspondence" (letters to the editor) a full page Victory ad titled "Victory Hooks It Up" displayed an incredibly ugly Vision (I think) with a wimpy tattooed girlyman screwing up his chinless face into a sad example of "bad biker face" leaning on the seat (he's so tiny he makes the bike look like a railroad car) in a paint garage. Biker boy is a guitar player (loosely put) from the garageband "Five Finger Death Punch" If you can get their overloaded-with-ShockWave plug-ins website to load, you can listen to their overwrought, uninspired death metal drivel on their "Media" page. I like to call this "pissed-off spoiled rich kid music." (I'm sure Paul Ryan will put them on his iPod in a decade or two). It's a version of the kind of "punk" that drooled out of Southern California in the 80's; more spoiled brats complaining that mommy didn't buy the right Mercedes for their middle-school graduation present. This kid, Jason Hook, is posed leaning against the bike's seat, with his arms crossed so he and push out his flabby little heavily tattooed arms to look like he might have a muscle in there somewhere. The dude might be 18 and he's already doing a Donny Trump comb-over to hide his receding hairline. The tattoo on his neck looks like a clown's bowtie and he's clearly as comfortable in a workshop and leaning on the bike as Trump would be in a factory assembly line.

Victory is (probably successfully) trying to link the company's vintage technology to people who are younger than . . . me. In fact, Harley and Victory are desperately trying to connect the Marlon Brando badboy thing to people who aren't ready for Hooverounds because their key demographic is dying faster than they can crank out bikes for old men. The only old guys who will still be riding in a few years will be guys who spent their lives riding dirt bikes or road racing. The Harley crowd is suffering the price of the Harley lifestyle: at least the ones who haven't already died from heart failure, stroke, the clap or AIDS, dementia, or general purpose stupidity.

I don't see it, but that amounts to a completely clueless opinion. I never imagined an under-50 group that would be dorky enough to call themselves "Young Republicans." That's as oxymoronic as "old athletes" or "smart hillbillies." With perception being everything, anything is possible in a world where reality is so distorted that calling smart people "elites" and Paris Hilton a "job creator" is a successful tactic. I guess. I gotta move to Montana and start growing dental floss.

Wimp-rock at its silliest.

If I were a better person, I'd quit picking on this "local" company because . . . it's not nice to beat up on the handicapped. If Polaris had grown the balls to buy a piece of KTM, I might have a completely different outlook on the company. But . . . goddamn it, this kind of shit is just too easy to whack on. I feel like Stephen Cobert watching the Republican National Convention trying to decide which piece of lunacy to to hammer at first. I'd love to give you a link where you can look at this ad, but Victory has wisely kept this one off of the internet because it is such perfect material for ridicule. Maybe I'll scan it. This can't go unridiculed.

[Ok, I did scan it. You tell me if I'm over the top on this one. Not that your opinion will change how I feel about whiny rich kid rock.]

The Gift Horse's Mouth

Back in late April, Tousley Motorsports had an event that has left me questioning my sanity. The dealer hosted a Victory "Kick Start the Season Event" where Victory got to show off the brand's line of motorcycles and their famous "Victory girls." Because there was free food and an opportunity to test ride any of Victory's products (except the girls), I ventured forth.

As evidenced by my experiences test riding for MMM, I sort of assumed I'll ride anything once. After sampling the food and watching the girls for a while, I wandered among the bikes to see what I might like to try out. I swung a leg over the Vision, the Judge, the Crosscountry, and the Hammer and walked around the rest of the models they had on display and ready to ride. I couldn't find anything to ride.

I admit that riding to the event on my WR250X didn't put me in a mood to straddle a hippobike. I didn't intend for that to happen, it's just the first thing I grab if I'm going somewhere. In comparison, everything Victory has to sell looks and feels 1942'ish.

The sound of those huge things rolling in and out of the parking lot didn't inspire interest, either. I could have sworn we have noise ordinances in US cities and a DOT/EPA that limits the noise from commercial products? No? So much for overbearing government regulations or even reasonable regulations. The first thing Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, or any other famous lawman did when you come into town is take your guns and put them in lockup. If we had any semblance of law and order in the US, the cops would confiscate bikes without mufflers. Damn that was noisy. I put my earplugs back in after I finished eating.

I started writing this rant when I came back home that evening, after a nice long off-pavement ride north of the Taylors Falls. I read it and decided to sit on it for a while. This morning, I looked at my "drafts' and reopened that experience. Some things change, some don't. Forty years ago, I would have laughed at someone offering me a ride on a bike like these. I wasn't much interested in anything that was street legal, but gigantic, underpowered, noisy machines that have no ground clearance, can't turn inside an airport runway, and are decorated with as many useless dinglebobs as a rapper's pimpmobile just wouldn't have been interesting. I didn't even like seeing bikes like that in the parking lot at a race because it always meant trouble. Twenty years ago, a friend was in the market for a "real bike" and he drug me to a series of dealers to look at Harleys, Honda Shadows, Kawasaki Vulcans, and the rest of the usual suspects of that ilk. I rode a few of them, hated them all, and couldn't wait go get back on my Yamaha TDM to erase the feel and smell of "new/old bike." After riding a Harley Sport something-or-other, I left him to his search and made a run up Mount Evans to wash away the memories. The next day, I took the long route through Ramparts to Colorado Springs to Pikes Peak and divested myself from the cruiser crusade. He bought a Sportster and it still lives in his garage, twenty years older and with less than 5,000 miles on the odometer.

At the Tousley/Victory event I only lasted for about as long as it took to inspect the plastic bits on the Victory Girls and eat a hot-dog. The memory of my disinterest in $20k garage candy has stuck around a lot longer. I get called "motorcycle bigot" about once a month by someone reading the blog or my MMM column. That is too serious a label. I don't hate these things, I just don't care about them. If they were the only motorcycles available, I wouldn't be a rider. I like my Escort station wagon better, as transportation and as a piece of engineering. Cruisers and golf are for old people, like bridge and senior housing and polka dancing. I'm only 64. Maybe later.

Pick A Grudge

A while back, I wrote about my bias/grudge/allergy to a couple of motorcycle brands (Call Me "Doubting Thomas"). A while back, in a conversation with a group of college students about customer service, consumer awareness, and who has leverage and when, I was reminded of that bias/grudge/allergy. During that conversation, I realized that I have a few more things to say about this issue. More to the point, I discovered that a lot of people have taken strong biases toward brands and people and it appears that more intelligent people seem to hang on to these positions a lot longer than do . . . let's say "less complicated people."

So, for the fun of it, I decided to list a few of my never-do-that-again biases (in no particular order) and see if readers are interested in joining in:

1. Hyosung -- Not only was the Hyosung GV650-Avitar I reviewed in 2008 a near-perfect pile of crap, but my reward for holding back my real opinion of that poorly assembled bucket of parts was a hysterical temper tantrum from the company's marketing asshole. I probably won't live long enough to forget that experience. I do react poorly to being burned.
2. Sony -- Way back in the 80's, I owned, my employer owned, and several studios I worked for owned Sony CD players and Sony's inability to build a slide-out drawer that didn't jam up or fall off soured me on all-things-Sony for at least 30 years. Five years ago, I bought a Sony camera on recommendation from a friend. It lasted less than a month before the Mini-DV tape door motor began to fail. I thought the memory stick option would be a backup, but that route only recorded low-res video and is useless. This product models everything I expect from Sony. The company is very good at electronics and absolutely miserable with mechanical devices. This is a really old bias/grudge and I was more than a little surprised to realize that I've hung on to this one so long.The camera experience will extend that bias to the end of my life.
3. General Motors -- My father was a dedicated GM customer his whole life. From the 70's on, I don't think he had a single vehicle that wouldn't have been classified as a "lemon," and he traded for (and got screwed on) a new one every couple of years. Normally, my father was a conservative person, but mechanically he was a radical liberal. I drove a series of company trucks, all GM, for a decade and they were no better than my father's collection of junk. I was almost ready to change my opinion based on a California friend's experience with a leased EV1, when GM's corporate brain-tumor decided to trash the whole project. I haven't taken GM seriously since. 
4. McDonalds -- I do not like bullies. I'm not a big fast food fan, but I am not even close to being a food purist. I have not bought or eaten anything from McDonalds since 1997. The company will never see  a dollar of my money again.
5. Presonus -- Disappointing, really. This company ought to be my kind of people. They make cheap, reasonably well-engineered products that pretty much do what they claim to do. Their engineers are a collection of high-tech wizards who are also true believers. However, Presonus is trying to become the next Peavey and that is a whole 'nother world of customer-hostility. I have been disappointed, repeatedly by their products and their customer service is vicious. Been there, done that, won't go back.
6. Harley Davidson -- I suffered an Italian Harley-labeled 250 in the 60's, but that didn't make a mark on me. Years of experience with HD's customers did that job. There is something about a Harley that appears to lower the IQ of anyone who owns one. If you think I need more evidence to make an opinion, you might be permanently damaged. Look around you and see how many wizards you find riding Harleys. I've ridden at least a dozen HD products (not counting Buells) and there is nothing there for me. I may be old, but I'm not that old.  I don't play golf, either.
7. Polaris/Victory Motorcycles -- I hate having this grudge, but it might be one of my most rationally based biases. Several years ago, I bought a Pure Polaris Electric Scooter directly from the company, through one of Polaris' marketing executives. As you can see from the review, I liked this product a lot. As you can tell from the postscript, Polaris' attempt to disavow any knowledge of the Electric Scooter has put them into the grudge category and I've avoided their products since. In fact, when I was asked to do a review of the Polaris Victory Vision, I blew it off until other victims ended up doing the review. There was simply no chance that I would be able to ride one of Victory's hippobikes without being constantly reminded of the beating I'd taken from the company over my little electric scooter. Polaris/Victory is sort of a Minnesota/Wisconsin company and I'd like to like them. But I don't. Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me. 
8. British Engineering -- This might be my oldest and least rational grudge. I owned an MGA in the 60's and there was nothing competent about that vehicle. It, also, drove me bankrupt the first and only time. Since, I have helped friends overhaul MGs, Triumphs (cars and motorcycles), BSAs, Nortons, and Jags and I have not seen any evidence that it is time for me to change my opinion. In the 1970's, the company I worked for bought a half-million-dollar "high tech, heavy duty gas welding" rig that was controlled by British electronics and was almost by itself the reason the company soon laid off 1200 employees. Everything from Vox to Marshall guitar amps and from Trident to SSL consoles has taught me that the Brits are willing to do anything to stuff electronics into a box and sell it for inflated prices. Finally, I rode some of the way to Alaska with a friend on a Tiger and his problems were familiar sutff. As a side note, I was convinced that Top Gear was a comedy show, until a couple of my students set me straight. A British television show that criticizes automotive engineering? WTF? (Sorry, Paul.) I have not ridden a new Triumph, though. Guess why?
9. FRAM Filters -- For years, I heard other people complain about FRAM's oil filters but I kept using them until one fell apart and nearly killed my V-Strom a couple of years ago. 
10. Non-Stick Cookware -- I've had it with this stuff. Talk about a product that breaks your heart. From the cheapest crap to a $90 omelet pan, the non-stick part starts sticking after about 10 uses. It's enough to drive me back to cooking with lard.

Ride with the Gunny?

This is the most baffling ad campaign I've ever seen. What is the attraction to riding a hippobike with a grumpy old guy? If that sells bikes, Honda should pay me to take squids out on the CBR250R. Hell, I'll even yell at them if that adds value. I'll check their hippy credentials, harass them about their poor riding skills, and hand them over to a cop for special attention at the end. We could fill a local jail with violators if that sells bikes. What do you say?