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/801507
INTERVIEW PRESIDENT OF MOTORCYCLES AT POLARIS INDUSTRIES INC., STEVE MENNETO P116 including money, into growing that brand and its products. Was Victory ever profitable in its 18 years of existence? There were a couple of years when it was profitable for that spe- cific year [believed to be 2010-'12, when Victory sold around 13,000 motorcycles annually], but in its overall totality, no. You have a 402,525 sqft mo- torcycle factory at Spirit Lake, Iowa, with three production lines, which currently houses 800 employees manufactur- ing both Victory and Indian products. Will this impact the Victory workforce there, or will they simply be reassigned to manufacturing Indians? The engineers and sales force of Victory have all been reas- signed, and the manufacturing facility's workforce was not hit badly—less than 50 people were let go. Half of that number were offered early retirement, and the rest were temporary employees, so the impact on our employee base was not dramatic. How many Victory motorcy- cles have been manufactured in total? Since its inception, our teams have designed and produced al- most 60 Victory models that have been honored with more than 25 of the industry's top awards. We built well over 125,000 Victory vehicles throughout the 18 years of its existence, and a significant number of them are still out there running. We will be supporting them by continuing to supply parts and providing service and warranty backup for a period of 10 years into the future—they'll be gone, but not forgotten. We'll also assist dealers in closing down their operations, and liquidating their existing inventories. Is it safe to say that Polaris would have never taken on In- dian if you had not already had Victory, and thereby acquired a hands-on understanding of the motorcycle industry? I think it's exactly fair to say that and furthermore those 18 years of learning how to develop, manufacture and distribute Victory motorcycles were a priceless as- set in bringing Indian to market as quickly as we did, with such reli- able and well-received products. You'll recall the issues we had with the V92C Cruiser we started out with, and how our market presence really jumped forward when the entirely revamped Vegas came out in 2003 to replace it. All the knowledge that we acquired throughout those years with Vic- tory was invaluable when it came to purchasing Indian, and to build- ing up the Indian brand over the past three years to where it is now very much profitable for us. The experience we gained with Victory allowed us to go forward faster with Indian, and indeed without already having had more than a decade in the motorcycle busi- ness, I'm not sure we'd have felt quite as confident as we did about buying Indian in the first place. It was Victory that gave us the pro- duction, engineering and dealer "We won't get into rebadging anything, but in going forward we'll be using the know-how and styling cues derived from Victory in producing new Indian models." Menneto has big plans for the Indian brand.