Thanks for all the great responses to my little observation!
There’s no doubt HD has the best aftermarket selection out there and I’m not ashamed to admit that I have several parts manufactured for HD on my bike: rear solo rack; handlebar risers; and headlight visor. It’s nice for a British bike owner to walk into the local HD shop and pick something off the shelf that’ll fit our bike.
Erle, that’s a good observation and one that I feel lends itself to other localities. Here in PA it seems to be the “I want a bike so I can go to ‘bike night’ with my buddies†crowd in the market for a new HD. The peer pressure when talking to a new HD rider is pretty intense also. Everybody that owns an HD giving them all the advice they can handle: “do this, do that, don’t do what he said, buy this, sell that…†I’ve seen the “what the ****** did I get into†look on a lot of new HD rider faces , when they realize they just spent big bucks for a bike to “fit in†with, only to realize they need to drop an extra 2-3k on the bike to truly fit in. No thank you, I’ll go my own way.
There’s another good point you bring up, the old Knuckle. I bet you 90% of the HD riders that bought in the last 10 years couldn’t tell the difference between a knuckle and a 1940s Indian, especially if you removed the logo!
