Flashy paint and a
mammoth rear tire
highlight Victory's entry
into the Extreme
Custom class
By Scon ROUSSEAU
PHOTOS COURTESY OF VICTORY
MOTORCYCLES
W
en it comes to cruisers,
all the function in the
world doesn't mean
squat if you wrap it in
styling that mimics a
farm tractor. That's a painful lesson that
japanese manufacturers have learned the
hard way, by offering up superior-engineered machinery wrapped in hokey '70s
chopper or bad Harley-imitation tinwork,
and losing market share to American-made
motorcycles that lacked the fit and finish of
their Rising Sun rivals but still captured the
imagination of the red-white-and-blueblooded buying public.
Funny that Victory, an American motorcycle company that effectively embraces
the ideals of European- and japanese-style
precision in its products, didn't take advantage of its midship position when the first
V92C cruisers rolled off the assembly line
back in 1999, but somehow it didn't, and
the V92C suffered the same lukewarm
reception as many of its japanese predecessors, as a solid-performing machine
with looks that were about as exciting as
your average forklift.
Fortunately, Victory saw the light, and
with the introduction of its Vegas model
in 2003, the company pulled off a major
about-face, rescuing itself from relative
cruiser obscurity to become a major
player in the marketplace in just three
short years. Buoyed by the appeal of
models such as the Vegas, Kingpin,
Touring Cruiser, and most recently its fattired Hammer power cruiser, Victory has
enjoyed 45-60- percent sales increases
each month and beaten the street in annual sales by more than four times, with
Victory increasing its annual sales by over
20 percent, whereas the rest of the cruiser
market increased by a solid 5 percent.
36 oaOBER 26, 2005 • CYCLE NEWS
Victory has achieved this not by flooding
the market, but rather by offering seminal
models that cover nearly 70 percent of the
current premium cruiser and touring seg-
ments. With its newest model, the 2006
Victory Vegas jackpot, the Minnesota-
based company hopes to tap further into
the biker emotion of cruising customers by
offering a model that it feels is capable of
ranking with the most extreme custommanufactured cruisers in the world but
