Street 750 Tours Italy

Europe has been a growth market for Harley Davidson. V-Rods are popular bikes and if you look at the customizers over there like No Limits Customs, Ricks and R + R Customizing, you find the V-Rod is their favorite model. The Street was, if you believe Harley, heavily focus grouped with young European urban dwellers and the bike was unveiled in Italy at the big Intermot bike show. It is a natural market for it.

Btw, you don't see all that many Ducs or high end Aprilias on European streets. What you see are lot of low buck Japanese bikes many of which are being made off tooling for models long since discontinued in the US. Kawasaki sold a 550 cc shaft drive all-rounder in Europe for at least a decade after that engine, which originated on the GPZ 550 was no longer available in the US. Same with the Yamaha Seca 900, something the US never saw but was sold in Europe as a low cost alternative to something like a BMW. Most Europeans can't afford high end motorcycles and the Japanese and Italian manufacturers cater to that market with low priced but low content/quality models many of which you don't see in other markets. I have a feeling Harley did a lot of careful homework determining just how much people over there are willing to pay for and what they want out of a bike. A little Harley cachet may be just enough to get the customer to look away from a Japanese bike that costs a touch less but just doesn't have the Harley thing going on.

harleyhoonigan said:

wow, i would have never expected that, good to know, shows what little knew i know about italy, i guess i should have taken that trip to italy

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I can't figure Italy out and it is my heritage. My grandparents came from Italy and my dad was sent there in WWII to fight the Germans, who fortunately for my dad surrendered just before he arrived, and they spent their time fighting the Yugoslavs over a chunk of eastern Italy bordering what is now Slovenia. Italy is one of the world's top ten economies, number seven I believe, but you go there and the cities look run down and dirty. I remember the first time I rode my bike into an Italian city my first thought was "heck, I could see this crap a short drive over the Mexican border". The mob has Naples in a stranglehold, they own the trash business and when they don't get their way the mob orders the city's trash crews to stop picking up the trash, and it piles up in mountains on city streets until the local authorities cave in once again. The Italian equivalent of go to h3_ll is "vai a Napoli", literally go to Naples. Most of what they make is junk. It's pretty junk, but if you are shopping for durability and ease of repair, you don't shop Italian.

Their cities are dirty and chaotic, when you arrive at an Italian airport chances are one or more unions will be on strike and this will affect some aspect of your arrival, like your luggage doesn't arrive or on return you can't check in because that union is on strike. When I was in the Navy I was considering asking to be stationed at one of our bases in Italy. Service members who lived there warned me off. It takes months after you move in to get water and electricity turned on, electricity didn't work all day every day, the water wasn't safe to drink (roger that, Italy was the only place I visited that the water made me sick, Germany, France, Austria, UK and all the rest were fine) and bribes are required to make anything happen.

Oh, and the drivers! I have driven or ridden a bike on four continents and the Italians are by far the worst drivers. Manila traffic is tame compared Italy. Mexican traffic is not usually fast and it is predictable, you just never know when the water in the street is really raw sewage from a broken pipe or if the grating is missing from the drain in the street. Don't want to drop a front tire into an open drain missing it's grate (stolen for the salvage value of the metal). German traffic is nice and orderly, and you get used to the high speeds very quickly because everything is predictable and the German drivers are skilled. Even Parisian traffic is understandable and, to me, fairly safe. Parisian freeways are just like LA, and LA developed skills and judgment will get you down the road safely and quickly. But the Italians are both fast and utterly unpredictable and that makes them really scary. They like to make three lanes out of two, and it is a high speed game of chicken with headlights flashing as a car comes directly at you in your lane as it tries to overtake a slower truck. You make yourself as narrow as possible crowding the right side of the lane as the passer blows by you with a combined speed of 120 mph or more while you chew on your testicles, which have retracted into your throat. Worst drivers I have ever encountered.

Then you watch the spectacle of Italian politics. Marrone, to use a favorite family expression (look the word up, it has three meanings one of which is crude). You can have Italy.