Fighting Talk: Harley design boss Brad Richards
Harley-Davidson is under a microscope right now: its every move is dissected, examined and critiqued.
And there have been plenty of moves lately. They?ve killed the Dyna while relaunching the Softail. They?ve announced a barrage of new models, including the Livewire. But although revenue is holding up at the moment, sales figures have been declining for several years?and were down 10% in 2018.
It’s a challenging time for the Motor Company. So I sat down in Milwaukee with Harley’s VP of Styling and Design, Brad Richards, to ask how they?re going to fix this. Harley?s PR lead Joe Gustafson joined us too, and both were raring to go.
Bike EXIF: There’s a lot of pressure on Harley-Davidson right now. People expect every new bike the company releases to be ‘the’ bike to turn things around. Brad: It’s so funny that you should say that. It’s as if you?re the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, and your entire library was forgotten before whatever single you’re putting out. That’s what you’re judged on?the latest track.
You really think that we’re just going to abandon the core, and start doing other things" The messaging has always been that we’re going to embrace electric ? because it breaks down so many barriers for new riders. There’s no transmission, there’s no clutch. It’s very simple to get involved in two wheels, via electric.
But we’re also going to innovate with our core i...
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