Harley-Davidson’s key demographic is beginning to fade into the distance as baby boomers ride off into the sunset on their hogs. Ducati, meanwhile, gets millennial pulses racing with its prize-winning, high-performance, European motorbikes. Could theirs be a match made in hog heaven?
Sources told the Wall Street Journal that Harley is seriously considering a bid for Italy’s Ducati brand, which is actually owned by Volkswagen AG. The deal could be worth up to $1.67 billion, said Reuters, which also reported that other potential bidders have emerged included India-based Bajaj Auto.
A Harley-Ducati match would make a certain amount of sense. In addition to the aging of it loyal baby-boomer base, Harley is facing a relative lack of interesting in motorcycling by millennials as well as slower sales and increased competition in the US and abroad—trends that can’t be fixed even by marketing gambits such as Harley’s “takeover” this summer of the town of Ryder, N.D.
Volkswagen faces a certain amount of pressure to consider unloading Ducati as the parent company continues its financial re-engineering and strategic re-focusing in the wake of Dieselgate. At the height of financial uncertainties regarding the scandal, the Journal reported, Ducati was at the top of Volkswagen’s list of potential sell-off candidates.
Still, there would be opposition in Europe to selling Ducati. “Ducati is a jewel and its sale isn’t supported by the labor representatives on the supervisory board,” a spokesman for Volkswagen told the Journal about the attitude of the company’s board of directors. “Technically, Harley-Davidson is miles behind Ducati. So, this can’t be serious.”
Or can it? It isn’t like Harley has remained stuck with one wheel in the past. The company continues to bring out faster, lighter and more exciting bikes to appeal to younger demographics. And it continues to develop its LiveWire electrified platform to push the technology envelope.
“I would say it’s the most exciting automotive two- or four-wheel product that I’ve ever experienced,” Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich said recently, according to Milwaukee Business Journal.
Both brands have intensely loyal owners and fans, and it may never make sense to try to combine them in the real world. But on the Harley-Davidson balance sheet, the Ducati brand could certainly be a shining addition.
And as Autoblog notes,
A tie-up with Ducati wouldn’t be Harley’s first Italian connection. The Milwaukee heavy cruiser manufacturer turned to Italian bike builder Aermacchi to provide it small, lightweight dirt bikes during the 1970s motocross craze. Harley’s Italian ride is most famous as the bike outcast troublemaker Kelly Leak rode in the original 1976 Bad News Bears film.
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