"For every boom there is a bust."
Although, I'm not sure that H-D is really in any serious trouble. But if I think they even realize that the market conditions of the last decade or so would not last forever.
You can't ramp up production to the levels they have and expect resale value to stay at the same (outrageous) levels. It's just completely irrational to expect that people will buy a used bike for the same or nearly the same price as a new one--except when they can't get a new one.
Someone who works at an H-D dealer told me they've got a lot of bikes sitting around.
The vast majority of used bikes for sale around these parts are Harleys. That's not a good situation for resale value.
So when anyone says that resale value is a good reason for buying an H-D (or any depreciating asset like a car), I wonder. And now everyone and his brother has a Harley, so people are not going to pay retail for a used one. You'll still be able to sell a $15K (new) Harley for, say, $13K (for the time being). But you can probably also sell your $11K metric cruiser for somewhere above $8k (unless it's a VTX, oy!). So really, is the small net gain in resale value worth shelling out the significantly extra cash to buy an H-D in the first place? I don't think so.
H-D has smartly taken advantage of the market conditions that have existed. But I think they know that they've been approaching market saturation and that they have a demographics problem. That's why they've introduced the VRSC line. It may not be a big seller in this country yet, but those bikes will help to move H-D towards its future audience.
As far as the rental situation goes, I don't think it's a big problem except in the respect that H-D has been positioned as a premium brand for a while. Huge fleets of rental bikes does not communicate "exclusive," "upscale," or "luxury." I think H-D realizes that soon, they're not going to be able to rely on that positioning any longer. They're just going to have to compete a little harder and speak to their core audience while trying to atttract future buyers with new products. Just like every other manufacturer has to.