Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

and a kickstarter. Wood is expected to finish the first machine in a few weeks; we'll have more. Graat American Motocycle Shows have seven motorcycle consumer shows on their 1984-85 schedule. They are: Los Angeles. California (December 7-9); Fort Worth. Texas (January 4-6); New York. New York (January 10-13); Atlanta. Georgia (January 18-20); San Francisco. California (January 2527); Chicago. Illinois (February 14-17); and Philadelphia. Pennsylvania (March 2~31). The Fort Worth and San Francisco shows will feature Mike Kidd-promoted indoor short track events. The Honda CR250 ridden by Jo Jo Keller to win the recent Greylock National Hare Scrambles used an engine built by Ward Ring of Green, ville, Rhode Island's Motoring Services. Ring is best known for building engines and tuning for endurance road racing's Team Hammer. Ring is currently building a CR500 for Keller; healso built theCRI25 used by Donnie Cantaloupi to win an arena-cross in Providence. The Steamboat Springs. Colorado. vintage motorcycle road race. which had been on the verge of cancellation. will run after all. according to Team Obsolete's Rob lanucchi. The event will have a new promoter. the Mountain Road Racing Association. it will run the same rules as the Daytona vintage race. and Dick Mann will be the race IteWlird. The race is aIatad for some time in September; stay tuned for further details. Team Green has announced its parts/ assistance policy for both the NMA Grand Nationals in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and the AMA Amateur Nationals in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. According to race coordinator Mark Johnson, Team Green will provide technicians to assist all Kawasaki racers. Technical assistance will be available after practice; the exception to that rule will be for riders traveling from Oklahoma to Tennessee. Emergency race parts will be on sale after practice, but Team Green will not have tires for sale. . (Continued to page 25) ee WRITER They better care how we do it in California By Charles Clayton We are invited to the HarleyDavidson dealer meeting in Reno this week. Wouldn't miss it for the free world. Something interesting is brewing in Milwaukee besides Schlitz. For instance, HarleyDavidson, Inc. is owned by 12 employees who, with the help of bankers, bought the motorcycle business out of the conglomerate that acquired it from the founding families. That took a lot of confidence. Was it hubris? In the few years since they've owned the company, those dozen entrepreneurs have suffered many setbacks, but they somehow managed to keep making and selling motorcycles. Now, manufacturing motorcycles in competition with the likes of Japan, Inc. is not the easiest business to be in these days. On top of that, the biggest market for their products, California, treats Milwaukee like a foreign country sometimes. I like to tease them that we are a different country here in California. We even have a tariff, called California Emissions Standards. Japan, of course, expects to be treated like a foreign country, so they cheerfully make motorcycles for California, which also sell well in other states, because if they work okay in California, they'll excel anywhere. This month, though, H-D bought a tiny company in Dana Point, California that manufactures a thing called the Trihawk. Not only did they get a going concern, one which has produced over 50 vehicles and sold most of them, they got a California concept on the order of "Small is beautifuL" The Trihawk "plant" is the size of a small dealershi p. Vehicles were assembled in a three-bay shop at the rate of perhaps one a week at the time of my visit. The showroom was just that- a factory where you could walk in and buy a Trihawk off the showroom floor or place an order and they'd assemble one for you. Trihawk's founders made only one major error. They thought they were selling an amputated car, when it is really an augmented motorcycle. Nobody wants a "three-wheel car." But a three/track motorcycle, now that has some possibilities. The touring motorcycle can only grow this large before it needs another wheel. H-D's owners know that for a fact. I even told them so. Yet I was as surprised as everyone else when, like the Remington shaver guy, Harley "liked it so much" they "bought the company." This is, to me, the same importance as Japan buying a motorcycle factory in the U.S. Harley- Davidson comes to California, and we welcome them, as long as they realize they are "guests in our country," like our Japanese friends. We do it a little different here - different than Japan and different from "back east." For examples, the Trihawk factory is adjacent to the sales floor, a concept borrowed (rom the kit car industry. Harley learned to use Material As Needed to cut their costs, but Trihawk appears to manifest a new concept: Material As Sold. Trihawk offers the opportunity for the Harley guys to be here and develop this new kind of motorcycle in the most critical market environment there is - southern Cal. They have the ideal vehicle for it. I suppose that Dana Point could use some of that old Milwaukee knowhow, too, but I just hope the exchange of ideas is two-way. If ever America's industrial midwest can learn to compete with the other countries, they will have to learn and adapt the best management techniques that those countries developed. The new. independent HarleyDavidson Company seems to be leading the rest of the smokestack industries making use of these techniques and now, at last, they may teach us in California to manufacture three-track motorcycles, as old H-D once taught Japan how to make two-wheelers. 3

• Cover