The Decision

IN a hotel conference room in Arcadia, 18 miles North of Los Angeles Harley-Davidson unveiled the V-Road to the world’s press. We took the chance to speak to the people behind the V-Rod with an obviously excited Bill Davidson, Director of Product Development for the Harley-Davidson Motor Company leading the proceedings. That’s Davidson as in the name and Willie G Davidson’s son.

Davidson said: ” We’re extremely excited about today and the chance to show you the bike we’ve had the idea about building since 1995. For us to pull the cover off is a truly exciting moment for us. There’s not many companies in the world that can say they’re 99 years old, let alone a motorcycle company, yet over the past few years we’ve continued to build new motorcycles. You may ask yourself why don’t we relax and enjoy our success for a while? We’ve been pumping out more than ever before and with our 100 years coming up next year it’s time to start a new chapter of bikes to lead us in to the next 100 years. ”

The bike is a result of seeing some changes coming in the market and listening to customers, which is something Harley pride themselves in. Davidson said: ” Around the world we have a 600,000 strong owners group and we’re very close to our customers as they’re our best source of information. And when we’ve been somewhere like Daytona, Sturgis or a rally in Austria or France we pride ourselves on talking to owners and get tremendous feedback. But instead of just leaving that kind of information in our heads, when we get back to Milwaukee we have follow-up meetings about what we’ve learnt, what people are tweaking.

” There’s a passion at the Motor Company and we believe ion what we build. And by riding our bikes and a full fleet of competitors products we can get very in depth with the bikes. We love Harleys and we love motorcycling and that passion pulls together our team. ”

Over the past few years Harley has seen a rise in the kind of performance people are looking for with a cruiser style bike. Something that companies like Honda has picked up on in the past with bikes like the GoldWing-powered F6C.

Davidson said: ” Soon after we introduced the Twin Cam engine in the 99 model year we got letters, phone calls and e-mails showing our customers were thrilled that had the higher power compared to the Evolution engine. And the growth in our Screamin Eagles range of parts shows us they’re looking for higher performance.

” But just building a new high performance motorcycle isn’t enough, though we realised early on we have the market leading brand and wanted to marry that with performance. But in order to give the new bike the credibility it needs to wear a Harley-Davidson badge we had to follow some very important philosophies.

” It had to look, sound and feel right. The V-Rod is born and bred in Milwaukee, like all our other machines in the past 99 years and has earned the right to wear Harley-Davidson on its tank. ”