STURGIS, S.D.—Lynn Lichti of South Dakota has ridden many different brands and styles of motorcycles since he was a teenager in the 1960s.
Today, Lichti is rocking a Harley-Davidson FLRT Freewheeler, a three-wheel powerhouse sporting a big engine with all the bells and whistles of modern electronics.
“This little button here tells you 10 different things right through to the odometer,” said Lichti, pausing to light a cigarette outside the Black Hills Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership in Rapid City, South Dakota, about 28 miles southeast of Sturgis.
Lichti, now a senior, remembers when times and motorcycles were younger and less complicated.
He still owns a 30-year-old Harley with “nothing on it—not even turn signals,” he said, bare-bones compared to the newer models.
Freedom, Pure and Easy
“It’s always been a source of freedom—the air in your hair, the breeze on your knees, going down the highway,” Lichti told The Epoch Times.To Lichti and millions of other motorcycle enthusiasts, that expansive feeling—giddy, boundless, forged in steel, chrome, leather, and denim—is the essence of motorcycle riding.
In less than two months, the downtown streets of Sturgis will be rumbling with motorcycles arriving for the 83rd Sturgis Motorcycle Rally from Aug. 4 to 13.
Most bikers making the annual run will ride Harleys the way it’s always been since the rally began in 1940.
Other popular foreign and domestic makes, like Indian, Triumph, Honda, and Yamaha, will be there too.
“There’s a very historic draw to the [Harley-Davidson] brand,” says Al Rieman, Black Hills Harley’s director of operations.
“Our world is bifurcated—there’s Harley-Davidson and metrics--everybody else. When selling a motorcycle, we’re rarely selling against another brand.”
“As with many countries in the early years of the 20th century, America had hundreds of motorcycle manufacturers, some of which lasted a few months, some a few years, and one or two that survived to the present day.
“It can’t be denied that Harley-Davidson is America’s longest-running and most successful motorcycle manufacturer” since 1903.
The problems confronting motorcycle builders like Harley in 2023 are an aging customer base and the need to diversify with more innovative products.
Enter Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire electric motorcycle and the Pan America adventure bike, which was “so good right out of the box there is more to the grand old man of American motorcycling than heavy, chrome-laden cruisers.”
However, motorcycle enthusiasts generally agree that the spirit of motorcycle riding is the experience it delivers.
Bill Grobs of Rapid City is a traditionalist, preferring a loud, boisterous Harley “hog” over a foreign or other domestic make.
Precious Metal
Though “you’ve got to be pretty affluent” to afford a high-end motorcycle nowadays, Grobs said a Harley, by any other name, sounds “just as sweet.”“It just makes your heart race. There’s a sound on the road when you get eight or 10 of you riding together. It hits a harmony when you’re all going the same speed on those Harleys.”
Like Grobs, Veterans Helping Hands executive director Dave Gates views the Harley-Davidson phenomenon as a “part of history” that embodies the American ethos of freedom and living life to the fullest.
The 1969 movie Easy Rider idolized the biker lifestyle. Motorcycle groups, clubs, and even notorious gangs like the Hells Angels and the Bandidos still rally around the Harley brand as they did then.
“Everybody in it now is getting to be around our age. We’re getting into our 70s. There’s not a lot of young bikers coming up to fill that void,” Gates told The Epoch Times.
Yes, there are younger mainstream Harley enthusiasts, Gates said, but it takes work and time for a young person to afford the steep price tag in today’s challenging economy.
Owning a Harley can now run anywhere from $15,000 to $40,000 and even as high as $76,000 for a red-white-and-blue three-wheeler.
“We’ve got a bit of a demographic where new riders are coming in, and maybe old riders are falling out fast or a little faster,” Rieman said.
Rieman said Harley-Davidson’s storied history adds luster to an almost cult-like appeal for modern buyers, who tend to lean conservative and patriotic and exhibit a common streak of rebelliousness in them.
Harley-Davidson was a primary supplier of motorcycles to the military during World Wars I and II.
Rieman said the company was able to weather the economic turmoil of the Great Depression while other manufacturers went under.
Ride of a Lifetime
“Harley-Davidson is low-end, seat-of-the-pants torque, roll the throttle—Broommmmmm—off you go,” he said.Rieman said owning a high-end motorcycle like a Harley is a “discretionary purchase” and a lifestyle decision.
He said that younger people with limited funds, credit lines, and equity history might have to wait longer to accumulate the wealth their older counterparts possess to acquire a Harley.
The financial crisis of 2008-09 saw overall motorcycle sales in the United States plummet. By contrast, Rieman said the COVID-19 pandemic was good for Harley’s bottom line.
“We didn’t care for 2008 and 2009 very much. Nevertheless, we were always profitable the whole time,” Rieman told The Epoch Times.
“The pandemic helped because it drove people from the confines to the outdoors. They wanted to be outdoors. During COVID, motorcycle [sales] did very well. The boats did very well. Campers did very well. People were looking for all avenues to escape to the outdoors.”
“We did well during that period. We had some product constraints, but luckily there was an ample supply of used motorcycles to put many people on two wheels.”
In December 2021, Harley-Davidson announced a public merger of its electric bike division with LiveWire, an independent EV motorcycle company since 2019.
“Every crisis is an opportunity; I really saw a huge opportunity, especially in the time when people were locked down at home who just wanted to get out and ride, and we see a great surge in new riders coming to the sport,” said Jochen Zeitz, chairman, president, and CEO of Harley-Davidson in a statement celebrating the merger.
Statista reported that global shipments of Harley-Davidson motorcycles totaled more than 178,000 in 2022, a 7.7 decrease year over year.
“While the brand started to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, markets such as Latin America still recorded a drop in retail sales of around 39 percent,” Statista added.
America’s first motorcycle company, Indian Motorcycle, sold 36,634 motorcycles in 2021. Polaris Industries purchased the company in 2011 after its bankruptcy and ceased operations in 2003.
Despite market turns and fluctuations, the Harley-Davidson brand remains the top dog among domestic motorcycle manufacturers.
Now that things are primarily back to normal following the pandemic, Rieman said that some customers might have second thoughts about their pandemic-driven purchase and are looking to sell.
“They’re not as excited about it, and when they go to sell it, they’re going to lose a bit of money because they didn’t own it long enough,” he said.
Bloomberg reported that many Harley-Davidson customers during the pandemic had fallen behind on their loan payments, sparking a surge in motorcycle repossessions and a $52.6 million credit loss for the company’s financial services division.
Rieman said Harley’s market analysts expect there to be upswings and downturns in a weakening economy. But 20 years from now, he’s confident Harley-Davidson will still exist.
He said the annual Sturgis rally reinforces the motorcycle lifestyle as it brings thousands of like-minded bikers together in the spirit of freedom and camaraderie.
“It’s almost like the Old West where the trappers had what they used to call the Rendezvous. They were off, living their lives, catching beaver and shooting elk. But occasionally they'd have a rendezvous, pull together, and have a party.”
“There’s something about that motorcycle lifestyle—it doesn’t appeal to a lot of people—but to those bitten by that bug, it’s important,” Rieman said.
