[acecycleins]

Harley-Davidson to Cut Shipments, Jobs - MotorcycleUSA.com

I predicted (in that silly union thread I think) that HD would lower production to below the 300K mark this year. By August you will see this to be true. 500 or so lay-offs by Sept and wheelin' and dealin' with onion members for early retirement buy-outs.
I'm no GMP but I've been in the ball park with what I've said since spring of 2007. Not bad for a guy that manages to half a$$ his way through the motorcycle business world and still be in business.

 

[acecycleins]

I think you are the new GMP. To predict that Harley sales would be down is absolutely incredible! Nobody would have thunk it! Then again if you were really smart, you would have invested 5 grand in Harley's first public stock offering, and you would be posting from your palace in France.

It's not the prediction of down sales that's important. It's the total number of produced units. To drop 30k units in a year in production is astounding. Soft market and economy aside, Harley couldn't have sustained those lofty numbers for long. HD knew the market was changing and instead of starting the draw-down in the last quarter of 2005 they waited. If they started the draw down for the 2006 models no one would have been suprised by the drastic numbers shift (drastic for HD anyway). The strike a while back hurt things for HD but the slow down was already in motion by then and Harley should have telegraphed the lay-offs and reduced production before the strike to get the investors ready for the loss of revenue.