Clayton Koenig bought a Harley-Davidson XL883 Sportster in 1999 from Bartels Harley-Davidson in Marina Del Rey, CA, and ever since then has had nothing but problems with it.
Not only that, he's had frustrations dealing with the dealer wrench. Haven't we all?
So dissatisfied with his ownership, over 5 years and 20,000 miles, he decided to publish his story on a website called, "Does Harley Suck"...
Since then, other people have submitted their "Harley Sucks" horror stories, and Clayton now envisions himself as the "IT guy" towards providing the slighted Harley suckers owners a place to vent.
Well ok, I'm a Harley owner too. I've had warrantee work done on it twice already, and experienced other minor problems that were easily remedied. But if you go through the NHTSA recall database, you'll find just as much recall notices filed by Honda and Yamaha as you will Harley-Davidson. And there are just as many bad metric wrench shops as there are Harley shops.
Yeah, I know metric owners are going to say lots of great stuff about their bikes. I own a metric cruiser too. But the fact is that no company produces a well-made motorcycle anymore.
Props to Clayton for not sitting quietly and taking his lumps, however. But my advice is to change the format of the website to an actual forum, like phpBB, it'll probably be a lot easier to manage.
James May, who writes about automobiles for the UK-based newspaper, The Telegraph, recently spent some considerable time travelling throughout Southern California, and offers up a unique perspective about Harley-Davidson riders...
In Britain, Harleys seem to be ridden by people who secretly wish they'd been born American. My friend Richard Hammond recently bought a Harley, but he already had a big hat and some cowboy boots so he probably thought he might as well keep going.
And then May goes on to say this about Harley riders in Southern California...
Out here it resonates perfectly with the mountains in the infinite distance and the futility of trying to go anywhere quickly rather than at leisure, and suddenly it's blokes on Japanese sports bikes who look horribly misguided.
I can't help thinking, however, that May has lumped all California Harley riders into the same bucket.
That is, there are some who ride a Harley because they think it's thing to do, they're posers, wannabes. They dress up in full biker regalia, when in fact, they wouldn't dress that way when they're taking the wife and kids out to dinner.
It's interesting to see how people's taste in clothing changes depending on what vehicle they're driving.
Then there are Harley riders who just like Harleys for any one of several reasons. It's no different than liking Kawasakis, or BMWs, or whatever.
