|
Wanna buy a Fat Boy? Trying to get rid of one, for the estate of a friend...
I choose not to own a Harley but I have friends that do. They get soaked by the local dealer for $300 oil change services. One of them just spent north of $2k to fix a clutch problem caused by a nut that was improperly tightened when it was built. Took the better part of a month to get fixed, no help from Harley on the cost, and the dealer did the repair without getting his permission first. That's the kind of crap they ought to fix. When I was in the car business, it was the service experience that brought people back to buy another.
Granted, Harleys are far better than they were in days past but I don't think they ever achieved Japanese levels of reliability and low service costs. I've personally owned something like 35 or 40 bikes and the only failure I've ever had was a single taillight bulb. Some of the service costs can be blamed on the dealers, as they probably make most of their money from service and ancillary sales of clothing and accessories.
As for the Suzuki story... after the downturn in the overall market that occurred after the last economic crash, most US dealers had way too much inventory. Rather than burden their dealers with more, Suzuki elected to not import most of their street product line in 2010, not just the GSX-R models. The market is better now than it was then but I don't think it will ever fully recover.
|