The 103-year-old Harley-Davidson Motor Company is a world-famous success in the motorcycle business. Wisely, it is always seeking to improve upon itself. Today, more than 35 years after the rise of women’s liberation movement, women are still barely ten percent of Harley-Davidson riders*. Understandably, the Motor Company would like to expand in this market. With good intentions, and confident a fair amount of ink would follow, the Motor Company invited a group of experienced motojournalists to a couple of press junkets. Their ages ranged from early-forties to early-fifties, and they—We— were all women.
In June, 2004, H-D took us to Las Vegas, Nevada to ride six or seven bikes—Harley cruisers and Buells—for a day. A year and a half later, H-D gave us two days to wind out the gears around the switchbacks and fog-filled canyons of California's San Bernardino National Forest on the 2006 models. More often, on new-model-release junkets, the journalists ride one bike for at least a day. We took every available moment to tell some of H-D's top longtime officers and engineers not just what we thought of their motorcycles, but what motorcycles mean to us.
Yes, it's fun, it's cool. With controls at each hand and foot, we are more focused on the task of operating the machine. We enjoy the feeling of successfully applying skill and power. Without a cage of metal around us, we see the environment more clearly, and use this information to keep ourselves safe. The road isn't pink and blue, we really don't see anything gender-specific about it. All the he-man, woman-bashing, authority-rebelling posturing is beneath us, what's the big deal? For us, it's a better way to get around. Most of us are pretty familiar with Harleys, and several of us own them.
H-D is a significant player in the domestic motorcycle market. Sales of heavyweight motorcycles (over 750ccs) have continued to rise slowly over the last five years, but the Federal Highway Administration's registration numbers show that motorcycle riders comprise just two percent of American road users, so the market is hardly oversaturated. Although motorcycling may not be for everyone, clearly, there’s plenty of room to swell the ranks considerably.
Generally accepted market research** reports that women control 80 percent of an American family's spending, over $2 trillion a year. So, the hand that rocks the cradle also holds the purse-strings. The problem isn’t just that women don’t ride motorcycles. It’s that most women don’t want the men in their lives to ride them. Sadly, even in today’s self-indulgent world, lack of personal empowerment still keeps many women (and men) away from motorcycles. They don't want to risk a spouse’s disapproval and many lack the confidence or the humility to acquire the education and practice that overcome fear. Interestingly, few members of both the H-D contingency and the group of journalists were parents.
While women might be better able to communicate the riding experience or sell motorcycling to other women, Harley’s attempts to bridge the gender gap still contains a generational slant, reflecting the mindset of the Motor Company's execs over 50. Harley's 2006 V-Rod commercials aimed at women still rely on the self-deprecating presumption that they must refute a stereotype; it's still a surprise that a girl rides. It may be noted that nearly all H-D’s junket support staffers were under thirty, a demographic on which sexist jokes fall flat and corny. It may also be noted that such jokes fell rather flat on the gathered motojournalists. A very wise lady in her seventies who had been riding for fifty years taught me the best way to overcome a stereotype is to ignore it.
H-D has used the most modern and efficient marketing medium at its disposal—the internet—to deliver more anachronistic stereotypes to those potential customers most likely to be more open-minded. In early 2006 From over 6,500 items in the Parts & Accessories Catalog, anyone can find the saddle, handlebars, controls, and pegs for a perfect fit. Harley dealers are trained to recognize that women are more contemplative consumers, but do women really want to think about customization as soon as they buy a bike? Female logic holds that the more an item costs, the more perfectly user-ready it should be. Spending another few thousand dollars to permit proper fit (and not receive any sort of financial credit for removed parts that you’ll never use) seriously detracts from any definition of value. The Custom Vehicle Operation has been one of Harley’s efforts at further splintering the market. There’s a fine line to ride with limited edition models; exclusivity is sexy, but planned obsolescence is not a virtue, it only further reduces the customer pool. Ironically, the concept of a garage queen has become so ubiquitous that Harley finds nothing counterintuitive about saying, “With the right balance of chrome, leather and paint, you can enjoy a touring bike without moving an inch.” If it’s only a toy, not practical transportation, or even that magic carpet to adventure on the open road, you’ve neutered a workhorse into a show pony. The go-faster bad-boy mentality perverts some of the Motor Company's most creative designs, like the Buell Ulysses XB12X ‘Adventure sport bike.’ For all its power and strength, there’s no intuitive pattern to the controls, and far too much deviation from the familiar, beginning with yellow on the run switch. Even at a crawl, two fingers on the six-piston front brake caused the front suspension to dive hard. The single-piston rear brake barely offers enough resistance at 25mph to slow the bike. Maybe that’s cool on the racetrack, but it’s deadly even for trained and experienced long-legged folks (like me) in the street, where pavement texture and composition are so inconsistent. I’d hate to test those brakes on a greasy toll plaza in the rain, and slide across a few painted lines or tar snakes. But hey, if they’re happy selling a whopping 10,000 Buells a year, they can keep on chasing—and narrowing—that ever-fickle niche. Family Values H-D, like most manufacturers, continues its mission to sell recreation and dreams to a niche market. The ripples expanding through the custom bike industry—which certainly has the attention of the masses—are a distortion of even Harley’s finest attributes, which include some really great motorcycles. Ninety-eight percent of American road users—half of whom are women—continue to be turned off by the exaggerated danger and rude behavior demonstrated by a minority who build and ride the loudest, most expensive motorcycles. It splashes mud back on the entire industry and all their quiet, stock exhaust pipes. Motorcycles, like all vehicles, are not gender-specific. It’s a form of transportation, too, not just a sport or a lifestyle. So while the industry has ridden on the image of macho rebellion for generations, one might wonder what the open road might look like if manufacturers like Harley were to focus on the practical values (even your mother could love) inherent in motorcycles like fuel economy, traffic avoidance and easy parking. American women could be persuaded by the notion that it’s not just fun, it’s fifty miles to the gallon. Eventually, a line of bikes outside your neighborhood PTA meeting could look normal. *The Motorcycle Industry Council *The Motorcycle Industry Council and the American Motorcyclists Association have been reporting this same ten percent figure for more than fifteen years. Nationally, in the same period, street motorcycle registrations have risen 35%, so it is true that more women are riding. **Business Week magazine – September 20, 2004
