Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128606
Victory V92SC SportCruiser the genuinely attractive but commercially misguided Excelsior-Henderson products of the Hanlon family company, but thanks to Polaris Industries' new Victory motorcycle range, cruise-conscious customers interested in buying the Stars 'n' Stripes are now offered a genuine choice for their disposable dollar. What started off in 1993 as a diversification project for one of America's billion-dollar manufacturing companies is shortly set to expand overseas, with Victory sales scheduled to begin in Great Britain By ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS BY KENICHI NAKAMURA ~ fter dominating the Made in America motorcycle market for the best part of 50 years - ever since Indian stopped building bikes for real back in 1953 - Harley-Davidson at last has some real competition for the title of America's Finest. Not from any of the litter of cloned Hogs currently scrabbling over each other in the showrooms in an effort to milk Mom's customers from her, nor from and Australia in June this year, and the company's export drive shifting up a gear to include Germany and Italy early in 2001. The company hit the U.S. marketplace with product in 1998 and is ramping up production right on schedule, with 3000 bikes built in the first full model year of 1999 and 5000 projected for 2000, all sold through a rapidly expanding North American dealer network which has recently broken through the 300-strong barrier. By the end of the marque's first five years of production in 2003 - coincidentally, Harley-Davidson's centenary birthday, by which time the Motor Company is targeting to break the 200,000 annual production barrier - Victory's range of 50-degree Vtwins will be marketed all over Europe, en route to a targeted 40,OOO-unit annual production, says sales manager Terry Nesbitt. By this time Victory's Polaris parent company will be looking for some return to start accruing on the $60 million it's taken to get the new motorcycle brand up and running this far. Deep pockets were required to make Victory happen - and happen right. And Polaris has just that. A $1.2 billion operation which began making snowmobiles 46 years ago in Roseau, Minnesota, the now-Minneapolis-based Polaris added ATVs in 1985 and personal watercraft in 1992. Polaris is now America's largest manufacturer of each (actually, the world's largest in terms of snowmobiles). In 1993, after the successful launch of their personal watercraft product line, Polaris management sat down to figure out what to diversify into next, it was a toss-up between lawn tractors, golf carts and motorcycles. Bikes won - but then the decision had to be made whether to target the off-road (like Cannondale) or cruiser markets. One look at the H-D balance sheet (which at the time was starting to grow serial zeros on the profit side) was probably enough. And five years later, the Victory was launched in public, and America's Finest had authentic competition - which is to say, an individual product owing nothing in engineering or styling terms specifically to Harley, but plowing its own furrow in the field of traditional American motorcycling, with a projected range of long-wheelbase, large-capacity cruisers headed by the kickoff model - the Victory V92C. Further proof that Victory can think for itself came with the show debut in Milan last September of the company's second new model the' V92SC SportCruiser. Though Germany's Sachs with their VX800 Suzuki-powered bike of the same The other American cruiser company: Victory hopes to put a dent in HarteyDavidson's dominance. 18 MARCH 29, 2000' cue • e n e _ s