I'm just spitballing to make my point with the numbers on the price of a Triumph built in the US, it would more then likely be higher then I stated.
As for the manufacturing of the motorcycles, it's also off the top of my head, but I'd wager I'm fairly close with the precentage . The skilled labor to build a bike is in the machining of parts, engine assemble, welding of members, and some paint work.
In the machining end of it, it's often an operator keeping up with CNC machinary, not 30 machinests doing line bores on cam journals, so even there, much of the skilled labor that was present in days past is gone. Once a CNC program is made for a job, there's little to do besides setting pieces into position. I serviced and repaired automated production machinary for about 3 years, so I do have some background in what I'm saying here.
A lot of welding has also gone to an automated process on a number of components. So has painting, so that leaves engine assemble as the highest skilled need to build bikes. General assemble is not rocket science, and most people can be trained to be a human robot installing swing arms on 3 models of bikes all day long.
Now, I'm not looking at only Triumph, but the industry with my conclusions. Yes, some places do encourage cross training to cover themselves in the event of a person caling in sick, vacations and such to keep production from falling behind.
