| Author |
Message |
    
Buelluk
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 04:51 pm: | 
|
Laverda built a V6 for endurance racing in the late 80's , it wasn't very successful.
A friend of mine at work still has a KZ 1300, it's amazing how small it feels when you sit on it, even though it looked enormous back in the day.
I am pretty sure it is carburetted ,with three twin choke bodies. |
Tramp
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 06:52 pm: |
|
xlcr said:"Jon, No. I think Washington Irving made it up."
speaking of whom- don't miss the 1st annual Headless Horseman Run in NY's Historic Hudson Valley....
Bear Mtn, West Point, and Sleepy Hollow.... |
Buell_less
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 08:23 pm: |
|
The original KZ1300 was carbureted. A fuel-injected version of the engine went into the Voyager touring bike circa '84-'85, IIRC.
The Laverda V6 raced at LeMans, apparently, but that was about it. Interesting piece, as you can see. Note that it's shaft drive, and a shot from the side would show that the engine is longitudinally mounted, like a Guzzi.
 |
Mbsween
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 10:45 pm: |
|
The KZ1300 was an inline 6 wit 3 two barrel carbs, Holy American terminology on a Japanese machine! It was as much a beast as the CBX
Rocket's correct on the racing honda being a 250, not a 125. Check out that redline (17,000) remember this is 1964!
quote:The 3RC164 is a six cylinder with the same configuration as all the other Hondas. Bore and stroke are 39 x 34.5 mm for a total capacity of 247.3 cc. Ignition is by a transistorised breakerless system, with 8 mm spark plugs. Lubrication by wet sump. The gearbox is a seven speeder. Power is 54 bhp at 17,000 rpm. A top speed of more than 240 km/h is claimed. Although a six cylinder, the bike is very narrow and the six megaphones are neatly tucked away.
I happen to live relatively close to the curtiss museum, a great place for bike and airplane junkies to spend an afternoon. Some nice roads also.
Here's a replica of the 8 from the museum
 |
Tom_b
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 11:04 pm: |
|
I was mistaken about the year of glenn Curtiss speed record on this bike, it was 1907 at 137 MPH on the real version of the bike Mbsween posted. Thanks for the great pic., could anyone here have the balls to 137 on that bike! |
Jima4media
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 02:25 am: |
|
Suzuki is introducing a in-line 6 concept bike called the Stratosphere in Tokyo next week.
Yamaha is introducing a dust-bin fairing on a scooter also.
The Maxam 3000 - 3000 for mm length - 10 feet.
(Message edited by jima4media on October 19, 2005) |
Rocketman
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 07:20 pm: |
|
Mike Hailwood won the 1966 and 1967 word 250 and 350 titles on the Honda six.
Rocket |
Imonabuss
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 10:00 pm: |
|
The Honda 125 was a 5 cylinder. But the ultimate in the insanity was the 3 cylinder Suzuki 50cc motor. Think, that would be like having a 30 cylinder 500, or a 60 cylinder liter bike. |
Xlcr
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 10:41 pm: |
|
Part III
In 1980 the Japanese motorcycle industry was on top of the world. In 20 short years from the time they began exporting they had gone from being unknown and unrespected small fry with no market outside Japan to the largest and most powerful motorcycle makers on the planet. They dominated the market, and the British, who had previously ruled the motorcycle industry, had gone down to defeat and disaster. Nor did the Japanese appear to see any clouds on the horizon. To their minds everything was going according to plan. Expansion would go on forever, and the future would see them rise to ever greater heights. In the American market only Harley stood in their way, and surely it was only a matter of time, and not much time, before they went the way of the British. None had the slightest suspicion that within five years it would all come crashing down, that they would go in such a short time from ruling the American market to barely being able to sell motorcycles, and desperately searching for alternate products to keep their dealer network alive.
This period of motorcycle history was traumatic and controversial. Amazingly, in spite of the fact it took place within the living memory of many of today’s riders, there is no concurrence to speak of on what actually happened. Apparently, fans of the opposing sides in the controversy have hardened their beliefs and memories on the subject to the point where wholesale revisionism has taken place, even in the pages of national magazines and by journalists who are clearly old enough to know better. Remember what I said about believing journalistic versions of history. The historic record is there, and as far as I can see, quite clear. Which is why revisionist articles like the one that appeared some months ago in Motorcyclist, written by Dexter Ford, a man who is old enough to have lived through the period in question, are so unbelievable to me and others who have strong first-hand memories of what really happened. I am going to put it down the way I saw it happen, from my personal viewpoint. Some will not agree, but I know what I saw, and neither Mr. Ford nor anyone else are likely to convince me otherwise.
The first thing that happened is simple enough, but even that is now the subject of revision by those who badly wish to put the cart before the horse. In 1980, motorcycle sales were down from ‘79. Starting in 1981, motorcycle sales really started to slump. By 1982, they were in free fall, and I’m not talking just the Japanese, it was everyone. Harley, the Euros, everyone. 1983 was a disaster. Sales were barely a fraction of what they were in 1979. This is fact. It is a matter of public record. But there are now people saying it didn’t happen that way. They remind me of those neo-Nazi revisionists that claim the Holocaust never happened.
To make matters worse, the Japanese had a larger than usual investment in the success of their early ‘80s models. In the ‘70s, competition among the big four had been fairly casual. Kawasaki held the performance crown, Honda took the more conservative road, and Yamaha and Suzuki only dabbled in the big street bike market, content to spend the decade stealing the dirt bike market from the Euros. But the declining sales of dirt models and small bikes in general had forced the last two mentioned to get much more serious about acquiring a portion of the large street bike market. Their first efforts at doing so appeared in the late ‘70s, and these in turn spurred Honda and Kawasaki to develop new models as well. So in the early ‘80s a second generation of new street bikes appeared from all four companies, representing a huge investment in new product. These included new v-four and v-twin Hondas, the Sabres, Magnas, and Shadows, new fours and v-twins from Yamaha like the Maxims, Secas, and Viragos, new four-valve fours from Suzuki in the GS series, and improved versions of the traditional Kawasaki fours.
Many of these bikes only lasted a few years before they were dropped for lack of sales. Ironically, some of them sold in numbers that would be considered more than respectable ten years later, but at the time the Japanese were judging them by the heady figures achieved in the wildly successful ‘70s, and they saw them as failures. Expecting the future to be much like the immediate past, the Japanese built and imported these bikes in massive numbers, and when they failed to sell, they began piling up in dealer back rooms, and then, when they would take no more, in dozens of rented warehouses on the west coast. Some are now saying those stockpiles did not exist, but I saw those backrooms with my own eyes, piled to the ceiling with bikes still in the crates, some of which were already two or three years old.
I’ve always been the sort that hangs around at dealers, I guess a habit left over from when dealerships were homey places where riders hung out for hours bench racing and drinking coffee or after-hours beer, instead of the fancy sales emporiums they have now. So I knew most of the local dealers pretty well at the time, and they weren’t shy of talking about the fact the companies were still forcing them to take more bikes in order to keep their franchises, in spite of their backlog, and they weren’t happy about it either.
In 1983 I went out to the west coast for a while, and I found the same situation at the dealers I checked out there. I well remember being at a large Suzuki dealer on the outskirts of Seattle checking out a showroom packed with bikes when a guy came in on a one-year-old 750. He walked up to the dealer and mentioned a desire to trade it in. The dealer just laughed at him. He said he couldn’t take it at any price. The guy got angry and demanded to know why. The dealer said, “follow me”. I was curious, so I followed along. He led us to a really large back room, and there must have been several hundred crated bikes in there. He took us to one corner and showed the guy at least 20 crates with exactly the same bike in them, some two years old, and said, “here’s why, I can’t sell these, what would I do with yours?”. The 750 owner’s last words were, “I’ll never buy a Suzuki again”. And who could blame him? I would hear it from more riders in the coming years.
The question in my mind at the time was, “why aren’t they doing something, why would they let this happen?” To understand the answer, you have to understand that the big four had never known real failure. From the beginning they had a history of constant growth and unending success. While occasionally a model might fail, as a whole sales had always gone nowhere but up. Since they first started exporting at the beginning of the ‘60s they had gone from one triumph to another. Like the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway, they were suffering from victory disease, they knew only how to advance, with no plans for retreat or failure. Not knowing what to do, they did nothing, and while the hand-wringing went on, sales continued to slip, and bikes continued to collect in warehouses. As my example above shows, the effect on used bike values and customer relations were nothing less than catastrophic. Yet still nothing was done.
Meanwhile the slump was having adverse effects on other companies as well. After years of barely hanging on by selling a few thousand Bonnevilles a year, Triumph finally closed it doors in 1983, followed into bankruptcy by Laverda, Benelli, and MV Agusta, among others. Harley-Davidson, a canny survivor of many market downturns, reacted immediately to cut production, avoiding the pitfalls now facing the Japanese. Unfortunately, Harley had just purchased itself free of AMF, and had a huge leveraged debt to service, and they needed to sell at least 35,000 units a year to survive, something they didn’t quite do in 1983. They were also more than aware of the backrooms and warehouses full of crated Japanese bikes, and they feared that sooner or later the Japanese would start to sell them at fire sale prices, and in the process bring the Motor Company down. SO.....they hired a detective agency which took pictures of those same back rooms. They found ways to get inside those warehouses, and took pictures there too. Predicably, those pictures ended up on the desks of the US Board of Trade along with legal papers accusing the Japanese of dumping and exporting unemployment. And faced with an overwhelming preponderance of evidence, the board ruled against the Japanese and passed what became known as the Harley tariff.
This is where it gets weird. I have had people tell me with all seriousness, both in person and on-line, that in fact the slump was CAUSED by the Harley tariff. In spite of the fact Harley didn’t even file the case until the slump was already going into its third year. In spite of the fact the slump affected Harley just as it affected everyone else. This playing fast and loose with the time-line boggles my mind, but still there are apparently a lot of revisionists out there that believe it, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. And just where would Harley have gotten the evidence to convince the Board of Trade before the slump, when the Japanese were selling everything they could bring in? As I mentioned, the truth is in the public domain.
But it only gets weirder. Here is where I really draw hostile fire by suggesting that Harley actually did the Japanese a left-handed favor by bringing the suit. Certainly they had no such intention, but in effect I believe that’s what happened. Why? Because the Japanese management was paralyzed. They simply didn’t have any idea what to do, they had no guidelines to go by, and so they were doing the worst possible thing, nothing. Sure, if they had kept it up they might have brought Harley down, but at enormous cost to themselves. When Harley won the suit, it was a wake-up call, a slap in the face, a bucket of water over their collective heads, someone calling a poker hand where the bluffing had gone on too long.
And the Japanese finally reacted. For 1984 Yamaha’s street bike line dropped from some 27 models to just five. Some models returned after the backlog of older bikes was sold off, others, like the Maxims and Secas and the cool little Vison v-twin, disappeared forever. Though a bit less drastic, the same happened at the other companies. To avoid the tariff, many 750cc models were dropped to 700cc, which put them under the limit. Honda and Kawasaki also had the option of having more bikes assembled here, as both already had plants up and running in the US.
But of course neither of these two steps made much of an impact, for the simple reason that the Japanese already had those three years worth of back stock sitting around waiting to be sold. And ironically, losing the trade case allowed them to do just what Harley had feared the most. Having been proved guilty in front of the whole world, they no longer had anything to hide, so they went ahead and started running huge ads in all the magazines selling off all of their back stock for cheap. I still have some of those issues, as I was subscribing to all four leading magazines at the time. They listed bikes as much as three years old, and all for very reasonable prices.
Some have claimed that the tariff hurt the Japanese and the consumer by driving prices up, but of course with all of those leftover bikes to sell, nothing could be farther from the truth. There has never been a time when it was possible to get a better deal on a bike with no miles on it. Some people actually reacted well to the new reality. I had several friends that bought Japanese bikes at that time. Their attitude going in was, OK, so the bike will have no value the moment I roll it out the door. Fine. I will be paying a stealer’s price for it, so when I buy it, I’ll just ride it like I stole it too. If I can’t trade it in, then I’ll ride it into the ground, and enjoy every minute of it. And those people did exactly that, and as far as I know, had no regrets about it. They were, at least, far happier with their purchases than those poor fools that bought earlier at full price only to find their bikes had no resale value. I prefer to use the word ‘valueless’ here instead of ‘worthless’. Those bikes were not worthless, because they were well built, reliable motorcycles that were fully capable of giving their owners a long and enjoyable ownership experience, e.g., they had worth. But they didn’t have value, because when you bought them that was it, your equity was gone. Many of those who switched to Harley at this time did so largely because of Harley’s stable resale values.
But wait, there’s more weirdness to come. By 1985 the Japanese had hit rock bottom in new bikes sales, but they had at least cleared out most of their backlog of leftovers. They introduced the first really modern sport bikes in the mid-eighties, bikes with perimeter frames, water-cooling, radial tires, etc, like the Honda Interceptor, the first 900 Ninja, and the air/oil cooled Suzuki GSXs. And they introduced their first generation of v-twin cruisers, a generation I tend to respect more because they DIDN’T all look just like Harleys. But sales didn’t really recover. In fact, for the Japanese, sales remained flat despite all they could do until the early ‘90s. Things were far different at Harley. Starting in 1985, in spite of all the cheap leftovers available, Harley sales took off like a rocket, and kept on climbing right up to the present day. Within a few years, they were selling more than half the new large-displacement bikes registered. Then the story appeared that Harley had performed some miracle of marketing.
I think it would be easier at this point to give you the revised version of history as I’ve heard it from several sources, including Ford’s article in Motorcyclist, although his version concentrated on the Harley Marketing Miracle only, and not the tariff. Here’s how it goes:
“In the early ‘80s everything was going just fine for the Japanese when suddenly, WHAM! Harley blind sided them with the Harley Tariff, and destroyed their sales by forcing them to raise their prices so high none could afford them, thus causing the slump. (I’ve never heard a logical explanation for the time discrepancy, though) Then, BAM! Harley hit them while they were down by creating an miraculous ad campaign that was so unbelievably effective it deluded thousands of riders into buying Harleys, in spite of the fact they were the same old leaking, rattling, shaking, and unreliable piles of shyte they had always been, instead of buying Japanese bikes that were faster, cheaper, better built, more reliable, and in general better in every way. So effective was it at blinding people to reality that apparently it’s still working right up to the present day.”
I call this story the ‘Vast Harley Conspiracy’ story, and to me it’s about as believable as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I believe that one was published by a guy named Ford too. I think the reason the second part of the story was created is because Japanese bike fans, shocked and smarting from the big four’s sudden reversal of fortune and Harley’s equally sudden rise to the top, just couldn’t bring themselves to believe that anything at all about the bikes themselves might have attracted enough buyers to reverse the Japanese fortunes, so it MUST have been something else, like some sort of massive ad campaign.
The problem is, after years of searching, I have yet to find A SINGLE SHRED OF EVIDENCE THAT THIS AD CAMPAIGN EVER HAPPENED!!! As I mentioned before, I subscribed to all four leading magazines at the time, and saw no evidence that the Harley ads in those years were any different than they were a few years earlier. Nor did I notice any greater ad frequency, any TV ads to speak of, or any attempt to spread their ads beyond the magazines they were already using, whereas the Japanese were placing ads in a great many mainstream magazines at the time. In fact, in my personal opinion Harley’s ads have been pretty poor over the years, even embarrassing, mostly just the same old pablum about sex appeal and the freedom of the open road. There have been a few good ones over the years, but I’ve never seen anything that might have the unbelievable effects claimed for this mythical bunch of wonder ads. My inescapable conclusion is that there are no marketing geniuses at Harley or their ad agency. Their ads are no better or no worse than anyone else’s.
In Dexter Ford’s article he goes into some detail about how such an ad campaign would be put together, but the examples he uses all came from a massive mega-million dollar media blitz conducted by Lexus a few years later, which was mostly conducted on TV, including prime time spots during the Super Bowl. He gave no examples at all from the Harley campaign he was supposedly describing, probably because there were none to give. Remember that at the time Harley was desperately trying to come up with the money to pay off the banks, and was actually spending LESS on advertising than they did in the ‘70s. I can only conclude his whole story is completely bogus.
On the other hand, there is no doubt the Harley bad boy image exists. So if not from an ad campaign, where did it come from? I believe it came from a massive media campaign, alright, but not one that was arranged by Harley-Davidson. I believe the REAL media blitz was conducted by many of America’s leading news agencies, magazines, and newspapers, along with a number of Hollywood studios, not for the purpose of selling Harleys, but for the purpose of exploiting the popular fascination with the Hell’s Angels and other motorcycle gangs in order to sell more issues and/or movie tickets. Rather than starting in the early ‘80s, I believe it started as far back as 1947, with Life magazine’s sensationalist coverage of the Hollister Bash, and followed with numerous newspaper stories and televison news reports about motorcycle gangs over the years, and a long series of movies starting with The Wild One in 1955 and continuing through the ‘60s with a bunch of cheap ‘B’ grade biker flicks. I think the baby boomer generation was thoroughly brainwashed with the whole bad boy image all the way through our childhoods, and by the early ‘80s the ‘bad boy’ Harley image was hard-wired into our brains. Had Harley actually spent the money for that mythical ad campaign, they would have wasted it. We were already sold.
So why did the boomers only start buying Harleys in the mid-eighties and not earlier? Well, let’s look at what actually did change in the early ‘80s. In 1984 Harley introduced the reliable Evo engine, and with it an all new model, the Softtail. I think there were a great many white-collar boomers that wanted to own one all along, but were scared off by their mechanic’s bike reputation. I think all it took was the promise of reliability and a really sharp looking ‘factory chopper’ like the Softtail, along with enough prosperity to give large numbers of them enough disposable income to afford one, to bring them flocking to Harley showrooms to begin the Harley sales miracle.
And why don’t the revisionists simply accept that reason instead of making up their whole unbelievable story? Because in fact Harley turned the company around with engineering, a new engine and a new chassis, not marketing, and it’s against their whole religion to admit that Harley even has an engineering department. And why hasn’t Harley officially denied the ‘revisionist’ history? Because becoming known as ‘marketing geniuses’ has done wonders for their stock prices and their reputation in general. Trying to tell people otherwise would have the opposite effect. The irony here is that the revisionists were trying to hurt Harley by convincing people that they were all just smoke and mirrors, and the bikes themselves were nothing. But here in America it’s the bottom line that counts, and it’s not how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose, so the general public doesn’t care how Harley did it, and are willing to honor them for their success regardless.
Finally, what did cause the great sales slump? Thoughtful historians, those that aren’t merely trying to affix blame, theorize that the boomers, who after all have been the ones buying motorcycles all along, took a ‘time out’ in those years, to get married, start careers, have children, buy houses, etc. I could add to that the fact cars finally got interesting again in the early ‘80s, and as many of us were hot rodders and/or sports car fans too, some of our money went in that direction. Whatever, what is indisputable is that it happened, and it derailed the Japanese gravy train for a while, and when it was over, lo and behold, Harley-Davidson was on top, at least in this country, and that’s more than fine with me.
Next, part IV, the Japanese comeback! |
Davegess
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 11:01 pm: |
|
XL, great work. Have you read Brock Yates book on HD? Very interesting, very revealing, explores the whole outlaw imagine thing in detail |
|
