This may come as a shock to some folks, but Polaris is a publicly-held firm in the business of... wait for it... making money! So my thank you card will go to Polaris.
Unlike Triumph, which is privately held by John Bloor, Polaris answers to the shareholders, and financial news is readily available to the public. What little we know about Triumph's finances is claimed 2010 revenue of 345.3 MILLION GB Pounds (as compared to Polaris' claimed 2011 revenue of 1.991 BILLION US Dollars).
We may never know how many workers in the UK lost jobs when production of the Triumph 790/865 line was moved to Thailand some years ago. Maybe they relocated from sunny England to southeast Asia?
While a number of workers were let go from the Polaris Wisconsin plant, a number have been put back to work due to the upcoming production of Indians as shown in the artcle linked below.
http://www.startribune.com/business/139542563.html"Polaris has added 200 people to its Spirit Lake-area workforce in the past 18 months, bringing the total to about 600. Another 100 workers have been kept on at a plant in Osceola, Wis., that had been scheduled to shut down. That facility produces engines for the Spirit Lake plant and Polaris' snowmobile factory in Roseau, Minn. The company expects to add an unspecified number of workers in Spirit Lake when full-scale Indian production begins."
But hey, if you were really concerned about workers in Wisconsin, you would be riding a Harley.
