Smaller, nimbler, better suited for city conditions. These were the words used by Harley Davidson while unveiling its Street 750 at the second India Bike Week at Goa over the weekend. And the promotional video features a guy-next-door model, vastly different from the macho image that Harley has always portrayed.
“This bike was designed and developed based on inputs from one-on-one interactions with over 3,000 riders in different parts of the world, 600 from India alone,” said Anoop Prakash, CEO, Harley Davidson India. The feedback was that the people wanted a more usable bike, with good handling for city riding, he said.
The Street is a completely new product from ground up, and is the company’s first new design in over 14 years after the V-Rod, which was a collaboration with Porsche and which hardcore fans call the “most un-Harley bike from Harley.”
The Street, however, has been developed completely in-house at the Harley headquarters in Milwaukee in the US. The designers went through the design archives all the way back to the 1930s, adopting bits from different eras to try and keep the bike true to the heritage of Harley Davidson, said Frank Savage, Harley’s design chief.
The result is the smallest bike to emerge from the Harley stable so far, a 750-cc V-twin that will shortly be joined by an even smaller sibling with a 500-cc engine that would however be identical in most other aspects.
The Street will make the Harley brand accessible for more riders in emerging markets.
Shorn of the rhetoric, however, the US bike-maker is reaching out to more potential riders in view of dwindling sales in the home market, as the traditional buyer of its massive cruiser ages out of the equation, and young bikers look towards Japanese and European sports bikes.
A decade ago the company had set off howls among purists when it introduced a range of small --- by its standards --- bikes with a 900-cc engine, primarily targeting the woman rider. This has had some success, with the range doing well in developing countries such as India where, starting at just over Rs. 6lakh, it brought the brand within the reach of more buyers, including the youth.
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