THIS TRANSCRIPTION WAS DONE BY OTTER AI SO THERE ARE MANY ERRORS. WE DO PLAN TO COME BACK AND CORRECT THEM, BUT IF THIS MESSAGE IS STILL HERE WE HAVE NOT DONE SO YET

Roy Merritt 0:14
Once again, it’s time to open your ears and expand your mind. Or maybe it’s dull your mind. Either way, I think these boys have some of the said. So sit back, grab a brew, we’re gonna have some to give you our point of view, here on Talkin Braap

All right, so back again for your second for a second attempt at Episode Seven here

Unknown Speaker 2:38
he’s doing his best to make some noise in the background. So

Roy Merritt 2:45
we’re back again check us out. Talkin braap.com Instagram everywhere talking brat chillage rule. Yeah, so we tried to start an episode we have some technical difficulties. And basically we were on Twitter Fire we were we were on fire, we’re doing pretty good.

Unknown Speaker 3:02
And the topic of the night kind of

Ethan Elliott 3:05
interweave that into the

Unknown Speaker 3:06
Yeah, the topic of it Yeah,

Roy Merritt 3:08
the topic of the night kind of stems from how many people we’ve see that I a bike for their first bike that is not the right bike for them. And, you know, every man major manufacturer, every major manufacturer, let’s throw that out there. Um, you know, has multiple likes, different styles, different cc’s, weights, heights, whatever it is, there’s a reason for that because not everybody has the same riding style and finding a bike that is right for your riding style and, and and your lifestyle, if you will, is a huge difference than buying a bike that doesn’t, you know, mean anything, you know, um, you know, some guys, you live on a farm and dirt roads and out near the mountains or whatever it is and You know an adventure touring type bike might be you know the the right bike for you and you buy a softail or something like that and after, you know riding it down your dirt roads and everything else you realize that man, this is not the right bike for me.

Aaron Staudinger 4:17
Yeah, like if you bought that shovel that I talked about earlier and you live on dirt road, you’re going to be so rusty and muddy. So we can start with that because

Roy Merritt 4:23
you made a very, very common decision as your first bike that a lot of times does not work out so well. What was your first bike?

Ethan Elliott 4:35
79 shovelhead man Well, no, no, wait, I will back. I started on a CBR 600 f2 about killed myself five six times on it and decided that I needed a roll cage. Yeah, we covered that. I bought a race car. And as my career improve, I decided man I want another I want a Harley man bad. And I shopped around and I wanted some street cred. I wanted a cool bike found one that was in hot bike magazine years prior and it was for sale bought it and I shopped around I mean there was like all kinds of bikes for sale I could have had a brand almost like a two year old bike I could have bought for the same price this thing looked bad bought it and it beat the crap out of me. Yeah, and I was greasy all the time. So don’t blame those guys those those greasy

Roy Merritt 5:24
Yeah, but everywhere you went somebody had something to say to you.

Ethan Elliott 5:27
Yeah, and I met some cool people to like the dudes that had similar bikes you know, they were like hey man, right with us whatever, because we were all breaking down together.

Roy Merritt 5:34
Yeah. And that’s something we kind of got into earlier that word you know, is that who you ride with or who you know can have a lot of bearing on what type of bike or what type of rider you are, you know, for sure. For example right now um, you know out riding with these guys, Friday night streets we do here in Nashville. What do you need some wheelies man, and yeah, don’t do for

Aaron Staudinger 5:59
sure. out there.

Roy Merritt 6:00
Yeah, no but i want to i do and you know I’m cruising around my 883 is set up for me as an everyday rider. Yeah you know there’s a little bag on it just tiny little bag just enough keep my shit in. The handlebars are comfortable. I got forward controls. It’s it’s set up as an everyday rider. It is not set up for wheelies, it is not set up for, you know, tricks and things like that. It’s set up to ride. And so I go out last Friday night with a bunch of these guys. And they’re all we were very heavy on Harley. There was a couple sport bikes. There was a couple of groms and we need to talk about groms a little bit because Grom is an amazing little buff, dude,

Ethan Elliott 6:39
I want to flat track groms man so so we’ll talk about that.

Roy Merritt 6:43
So be someone we go out with these guys. And now the funny thing is, is people sleep on at threes, and I’m always preaching at three that I can tell you right now up until about 80 or 90 miles an hour. You really can’t fuck it. There’s no difference in a Lot of bikes, you know what I mean? Especially when your light to light in the in the in the city and things like that when you take off that 8083 can keep up with just about any bike. And we were talking about it the other night, first gear and about half a second, I keep up with anybody. Then they start pulling on, he did something different. But first and like half a second, I couldn’t keep up with anybody. And so we go out and ride and these guys are doing wheelies and all of these things and their bikes are all set up, you know. It makes me want to buy another bike, you know, buy something to go out and thrash. And so a couple of these guys, their girlfriends we’re riding around on groms. And if you don’t know what a Grom is grumps, like I think it’s 110 cc somewhere around there. 125 maybe it’s 125 I don’t know somewhere around 100 125 and they’re, they’re small wheel small bikes, but they’re big enough that a normal sized person can ride around fairly there’s tons of parts form Oh, yeah, yeah, and There’s huge aftermarket, huge aftermarket because they’re really easy to wheelie. You know, if you drop them they’re not that easy, you know to necessarily tear up yeah. So the and these things through the city we never really got over 4550 miles an hour. You know what I mean? It just there was no point we were out doing really things like that. The groms were great, man. They they hung the girls were right down the sidewalk, you know? Yeah, they’re, they’re running around and I was like, dude, I fucking want one of these groms because I live in Nashville. So when they went around the city, I can just leave my driveway. They were trailer in these things in you know, because you’re not going to ride a Grom on the highway. No, Hell no, you know, so they trailer him in, come into the city, drop them all off, you know, do their thing and they’ll trailer out. I live in the city. So I was like, Fuck, I can grab a Grom and just meet up with them.

Unknown Speaker 8:49
But, you know, it relates back to getting on that

Roy Merritt 8:55
or making that choice for what kind of style of riding you do. And the problem was In that a lot of new riders I don’t think have necessarily networked with a lot of riders you know maybe just see television shows yeah marshals you know the guys who see friends out yeah the guys whose friends are already riding they help them buy the right bike, you know what I mean? But the guys that are like not really friends with riders that want to ride you know they see the OCC choppers and in the West Coast choppers and you know all these things in there like that thing’s fucking badass and I want to ride that that’s where I want to look like you know that’s what people look at me that’s what I want when you get

Ethan Elliott 9:35
the leather OCC monograms kidney belt that comes with the bike. Oh realize exactly why I’m sure they probably everybody that bought one probably has a tattoo. I think a lot of a lot of people buy.

Mike VO 9:47
I think a lot of people make mistakes because they listened to their friends when they don’t ride and they like we see that all the time in the retail Harley market. You know these guys will come in and they’ll buy like a Street Glide or a Road King or something and they have very limited experience. But their buddies all ride they’ve been riding for a while they all have baggers, like all you know Street Glide a bubble and these guys they should really seriously be like maybe on a softail at the most and probably on something even lighter. Like I’ve seen some you know, we’ve worked in dealerships for a while, you know, I’ve seen people get on a bike and go tearing out of the parking lot out of control and crash on a brand new bike. Oh yeah. They made it like 35 feet and crazy twice here. What the fuck are you selling this bike to this guy for? You know, I mean and

Unknown Speaker 10:40
sketch you’ve raised your hand Did you did you do this?

Mike VO 10:43
But you know and they buy the they buy motorcycles? I shouldn’t because the people that they ride with say this is what you need to do. You know, when I when I was in Arizona, there was a lady that has a shitty friends. Well

Aaron Staudinger 10:58
that is true. That’s true.

Mike VO 11:00
That’s true, but they don’t know any better. You know, and their friends are like, well, this is what’s cool. This is what everybody rides. This is what you need to buy and they’re like, okay, so

Roy Merritt 11:10
they don’t know I googled it most popular first motorcycles. Okay, and the first thing that pops up here is Yeah, oddly enough that this list is is pretty interesting. And I’m gonna start from the bottom because the top is absolutely incredible. Okay, uh, the bottom is this Suzuki sv 650. Yeah, is a really good bike. It’s a good all around bike. They’re very lightweight. They have a tube chassis, they’re super good handling bikes, and there’s a really big race circuit for the Bible.

Mike VO 11:41
Yeah, and there there are a lot of them they’re cheap,

Roy Merritt 11:44
correct. And I’ve known a lot of people that ride them everybody loves them. So so really good bike, I can definitely say that. So the next on the list

Mike VO 11:51
How many people do you know the right man? Three.

Roy Merritt 11:57
The next on the list is the Harley 83 I tend to argue with this a little bit, because I don’t believe the Sportster is a first bike. I believe that people do it, and they make it. And I think if you start on a Sportster and you put, you know 10,000 miles on the sports or you can ride anything, you know, sports serves are very top heavy. And, you know, extremely fun. They’re there. Yeah, they are. I love my sports are Don’t get me wrong, but I think if I would have started on a Sportster, it would have been a little different, you know?

Aaron Staudinger 12:35
Like, I bought the wife, a Sportster. I don’t mean to say the wrong way. It’s not I bought my wife was

Roy Merritt 12:39
Oh, yeah.

Ethan Elliott 12:41
I bought her one because she was tired of ride in the back.

Mike VO 12:43
How do you mean to say it? It’s not a chick bike. I mean, sports. Yeah.

Aaron Staudinger 12:51
Sportster Lives Matter sports.

Ethan Elliott 12:55
Anyway, so is the nastiest sounding frickin bike ever? Oh yeah. Put a pipe on it.

Unknown Speaker 13:00
No as an ad three, three, okay? They make a lot of noise

Ethan Elliott 13:03
they are I made it really badass and I test rode it several times. I had so much damn fun flicking that bike around. I would take it up the canyon because I lived in kind of like a road that led to a canyons I go take it around and flick it around for a while. Yeah, dang, man. I think it’s fun.

Roy Merritt 13:20
Yeah, there’s fun nights, they really are. And that’s why. So my choice in bikes is Sportster, because I only ride 15 or so miles to and from work every day, even before I was in the 20, so I’m on 20 mile each way rider. I like to push things to the limit. If I push the 1200 to the limit, I’d probably get a little more trouble than

Ethan Elliott 13:42
I’ve heard you ride home.

Roy Merritt 13:44
I’m actually the way I pin it. I love that bike because I know how thick the cylinder walls are and I’m just trying to blow them and you can’t do it. You cannot do it. So, you know, but I I’ve done some suspension work and I’ve lifted And I’ve done some things so that it handles better and I love to lean a bike I love scraping I love you know getting hard in the turns. turns are where I live and I love to be so the sports are really fits my style. I get on Dinah’s and I ride them like these low rider S is even the new softails I just still feel like pigs to me, you know, because I ride a sporty, you know, so, I just, I have a hard time like man, I really like the nimble you know, ability. Yeah, she goes down. I can get that Sportster anywhere do anything I need to do on

Aaron Staudinger 14:36
like sketch trying to flick around a bike. Yeah, yeah,

Roy Merritt 14:39
we talked about that the last time. Well, you would try to flick around. He was trying to keep up with me. And we were getting you know.

Unknown Speaker 14:48
Well,

Roy Merritt 14:50
I was gonna say you were trying to keep up because I was still in a right place I needed to be and you were not. So the next on the list Honda rebel 300 so it was always a 250 I didn’t notice a 300 Now this is something new, I guess. Absolutely. Honda rebels are great little bikes. There’s a huge market and people buying old rebels and tournament choppers and they make really cool little choppers too. They get like 100 fucking miles a gallon or whatever it is that you know they get great gas mileage. But you’re never going to want to take a rebel out on the highway. You know you’re not gonna want to get on the interstate and try to do at 90 miles I built one like that. I built an

Ethan Elliott 15:31
xs 650 it was my dad’s bike. Yeah, I chopped it up. Turn it into a chopper. It’s not seen the freeway once it’s been to the bar and back. Yeah, it’s been up and down my street and that’s about it now. points and a carburetor.

Roy Merritt 15:46
Next on the list is the Honda CRF 250 l rally. A 250. So this is this is a CRF is going to be a derby.

Unknown Speaker 15:56
Yeah. And

Roy Merritt 15:59
I see grew my 250 dirt bike is a first bike because it can be pretty powerful especially back in the two stroke days you definitely don’t want a two stroke 250 and then the next one the Ducati scrambler Cedric just left he has a Ducati scrambler yeah um fun little bike you know next on the list the Yamaha yz fr three the other you know 300 the Ninja 300 and then the top of the list is a Honda CB 1100 x Are you fucking kidding me?

Ethan Elliott 16:34
No wait, there’s a huge discrepancy in that

Unknown Speaker 16:38
you have like cheap bike cheap bike cheap like cheap bike.

Ethan Elliott 16:42
Yeah. And then entry level big bike leader bike

Roy Merritt 16:46
1100 don’t give a fuck what it is even a detuned 1100 for a first bike.

Unknown Speaker 16:51
Right?

Roy Merritt 16:52
I mean, you know I I rode six hundreds and things like that when I was younger and When I got on a liter bike for the first time, I scared the shit out of us. Because I got on one that guy had worked out it was an r1.

Aaron Staudinger 17:08
That’s what I rode first two four liter bike. scared, I should get down

Roy Merritt 17:11
the street and was like, oh, man, this thing’s cool. Because it was bigger. I’m a big guy. It was bigger. It felt good, because I’ve been riding the six hundreds and shit and they feel really small for me. And I’m like, Man, this thing feels good. It’s got some weight to it. And I got to the end of the street and I turned around and I brought the throttle and it stood up on one wheel.

Ethan Elliott 17:27
That’s what happened to me. I laid

Roy Merritt 17:28
it I let off the throttle, put it back down. Turn right back into this. I

Ethan Elliott 17:32
had the he had a Yamaha r1 he had the first set of BST wheels I ever saw. This dude had all the cool stuff. Yeah. You know, I was like carbon fiber wheels. Holy crap. It’s like back in oh three or oh four. I was

Roy Merritt 17:46
like, whoa.

Ethan Elliott 17:48
I rode the bike and I yanked the throttle back.

Aaron Staudinger 17:51
And it frickin not even dumping the clutch stood up.

Roy Merritt 17:54
Yeah. I quickly shut it off and came back home. I’m looking kinda like white ish. Oh, yeah. So back in Florida.

Unknown Speaker 18:10
Perfect. Perfect back in Florida.

Roy Merritt 18:16
There’s a large Puerto Rican community. Hi boosters are really big in that drag. I

Mike VO 18:24
see. Higher boosters are really big in general. So in my

Ethan Elliott 18:28
Well, yeah, they’re not quick, they’re fast. They’re Well, they’re not quick they’re fast.

Roy Merritt 18:33
So here’s the deal topic in my experience of riding through the last like 15 years or so.

Unknown Speaker 18:40
I hate hypothesis

Mike VO 18:43
because the Japanese riding on them though,

Roy Merritt 18:46
most of the guys carry that I see ride Hayabusa

Mike VO 18:50
doesn’t mean five mil idea. It’s a Falcon.

Roy Merritt 18:54
That’s they have no idea how to write and they have bought a Hayabusa for bragging rights. You know what, I just say that they can beat their friend, I think I think this podcast is over. And then I met a guy named Deuce, who I went to school with and he’s probably in South Carolina. He’s probably running a shop right now. I’d have to look him up. He had a couple I have boosters and had been riding high boosters since like the beginning. And I, in my experience, all I had seen was guys ride high boosters and straight lines really fast. And like they handled like pigs. You know what I mean? When we got into the turns, they just never, never anybody. I’ve seen most of that stretch. Fucking swing arm. Yeah, buddy. You had a buddy that

Ethan Elliott 19:41
had a zero. And

when I owned my time, I had to stop and he would be with me.

Roy Merritt 19:45
He had a stock wheelbase, one that he had done some shit to. And I see him jump to shoot over railroad tracks and stuff. Like he was crazy on this thing. He fucking rode the shit out of it. And he’s the only person I’ve ever seen that wrote a high boosah that I could say with pride. Take a liter bike because when the guys come up on high boost is talking shit I’m like dude you put me on any one of these fucking leader bikes and I’ll whack your ass you know i mean i’m fucking lacks it you don’t have no idea how to ride that thing I guarantee it you don’t need 1400 cc’s or whatever the fuck it is you don’t know how to ride

Ethan Elliott 20:18
a bike really quickly we were talking about earlier the supercharged what is I think it’s a Kawasaki or something like that factory supercharged bike 220 plus miles an hour.

Roy Merritt 20:29
I’m gonna say 14 Is that what it is? Well the ZX $14 z h2 supercharged 998 it’s pretty much what I said God Damn it’s it’s that’s what I said earlier it’s probably the ZX 10 base because that is their leader bike

Ethan Elliott 20:46
and it’s probably got a detuned pulley on it supercharged

Roy Merritt 20:51
tube frame like a Ducati looks pretty sick. I mean, a that will be stretched out

Ethan Elliott 20:57
to you very soon. So

Roy Merritt 21:00
Wow that actually the bat Let me see the problem with a bike like this. Oh, yeah, it’s sexy. The problem with a bike like this relates back to why I ride in 83 and we talked about that talking about this with people all the time. And it’s Top Gear. The British show fucking love goes guys gear is legit. They are the best of the best the Grand Tour yeah grand tour. I love that show too. So in Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson used to talk about how driving a slow car fast yeah way more fun absolutely then driving a fast car slow high by a fucking Lamborghini but you never get to bounce that Lamborghini off the rev limiter and every year you no way ever ever ti and yeah, you buy a Honda Civic and that’s where that tutor market comes from. And you beat the fuck out of it like I do on my a DD three and I absolutely love it agreed. I know that I’m not going as fast as I could other people Dude bouncing that thing off the rev limiter and beating the fuck out of it has a feeling that is hard to replace and if you buy a bike like this this supercharged fucking leader bike

Unknown Speaker 22:11
you will never bounce that thing off the rev limiter

Roy Merritt 22:13
ever at a drag strip yeah the distributor well maybe

Unknown Speaker 22:17
if if so if they sell

Roy Merritt 22:19
if they sell 1000 of these fucking 35 will end up on the strip so no no fucking run these things today people that buy this shit put them in fucking garages you know what I mean? Like a bike like that is way too much bike and and and that’s that right there is a really good example of a first purchase mistake. There you go a fucking supercharged leader bike. Okay, we know that if you do not know how to ride out the people that you don’t know you do not know how to ride that bike with a fucking kid. Exactly. It’s Darwin without question.

Mike VO 22:54
It will fucking kill you. Absolutely Good. Good.

Unknown Speaker 22:58
Go ahead

Ethan Elliott 23:00
Because I’ve been holding on to this whole time letting you talk but granted

Unknown Speaker 23:06
I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Jamie Lima 23:07
Sounded that sounded worse than I meant it for

Roy Merritt 23:14
my podcast

Unknown Speaker 23:24
this bullshit

Unknown Speaker 23:30
prison on the planet I didn’t

Unknown Speaker 23:36
want to interrupt but I held on to the one little key piece as well two key pieces one No, I don’t know how to ride we’ve all fucking established this

Mike VO 23:44
is I don’t want any chips. chewing tobacco.

Unknown Speaker 23:46
No, I love chips and dip.

Unknown Speaker 23:50
But to your

Unknown Speaker 23:52
Okay,

Mike VO 23:53
that’s what he was because he didn’t just

Unknown Speaker 23:56
put a twist on it. I’ll give it to you.

Unknown Speaker 24:00
Hear Your comment about on your 883 Yo Yo I’m still waiting because you can have the fucking curves we’ve already proved you got the curves all right I fucking took out an SUV trying to stay

Roy Merritt 24:14
with straight line. Oh no I ain’t got you yeah no way yeah but first but first and second gear you will be surprised how well

Unknown Speaker 24:22
and and every time you roll to the fucking stop sign with your

Roy Merritt 24:29
butt I doubt your third Ah,

Unknown Speaker 24:33
but the

Unknown Speaker 24:35
you know and it comes to what you’re saying about first purchases.

Ethan Elliott 24:39
Mike is I building

Unknown Speaker 24:41
I lucked out with my first purchase. You did pretty good on your check. Um, you know and you’re talking about the rebel my first purchase originally was going to be a rebel 500 and I was actually in the financing office, going through with everything when I got a call from a friend who was like hey, my buddy also you is

Unknown Speaker 24:58
you know So seven for

Unknown Speaker 25:03
5500 and I’m like, Well, I’m on it. And I come here and got the bike that I have now and

Roy Merritt 25:08
yeah, so you bought it oh seven you bought our street Bob. Yep. Pretty much stock. The way it was set up was a fairly stock I don’t know there might have been some little

Unknown Speaker 25:17
apparently it had a bent wheel. So,

Unknown Speaker 25:21
you know, dine is not a bad starting point just watch

Unknown Speaker 25:36
my sons of the civilization

Unknown Speaker 25:42
the Declaration of Independence do

Roy Merritt 25:50
we accept

sponsored by fucking whiskey Or moonshine? Because we drink a bottle every Holy shit.

Mike VO 26:04
By moonshine does that technically make you illegal?

Unknown Speaker 26:08
No, because it’s not illegal anymore.

Mike VO 26:11
moonshine is illegal.

Unknown Speaker 26:14
No, it’s not. Oh, it’s not it’s it is its own stores. I have nothing to say.

Mike VO 26:18
That’s not that’s just moonshine brand.

Roy Merritt 26:21
No, it’s moonshine. So it’s regulated moonshine. Yeah, just proof.

Unknown Speaker 26:28
Yeah, that’s but it

Roy Merritt 26:30
will still white whiskey, it’s still made the same way. It’s just regulated. So when you buy moonshine from Dale or you know, somebody like that,

Unknown Speaker 26:39
who you know why you name dropping,

Roy Merritt 26:42
whatever, you know what the proof is, you buy a

Mike VO 26:47
jar of alcohol from some guy on the street, that is illegal.

Unknown Speaker 26:52
Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker 26:52
Yeah, I thought it was entrepreneurship

Unknown Speaker 26:54
is moonshine. It is our true entrepreneurship, but

Unknown Speaker 26:57
it is Italy.

Roy Merritt 26:58
Yeah. So you can do The same

Unknown Speaker 27:01
just get it out right but that’s Yeah, but

Roy Merritt 27:03
you could do the same thing with grape jelly. still enjoyable you could make grape jelly in your house cuz you can’t get off grape jelly but and sell it and until legal unless you’re paying taxes,

Mike VO 27:14
right but grape jelly is not solvent in the state of California to cause birth defects or B.

Unknown Speaker 27:19
Or well I’m pretty sure it has.

Mike VO 27:21
I am actually in California probably every

Unknown Speaker 27:26
morning that says

Mike VO 27:29
you know what’s awesome it’s fire season in California.

Unknown Speaker 27:33
While you’re waiting, maybe it’ll fucking finally my old neighborhood.

Ethan Elliott 27:36
My parents live right now saying God it burned last year. What’s done is Oh yeah, your parents last year.

Unknown Speaker 27:43
Are you kidding?

Ethan Elliott 27:44
Like right up to the backyard? Like really bad and my dad can do shit right now. I hope

Mike VO 27:50
everything that hasn’t didn’t burn last year burns down and then it rains for fucking five weeks.

Roy Merritt 27:57
There’s so much simpler solution. Yeah. Really good fall.

Aaron Staudinger 28:07
Where does Nancy Pelosi live? Can that fall off in the ocean? Do it needs more than that San

Mike VO 28:11
Francisco?

Unknown Speaker 28:13
Well, here’s the problem, though. Are you pissed

Aaron Staudinger 28:15
off?

Roy Merritt 28:19
God dammit, we’re talking about motorcycle

Ethan Elliott 28:24
or whatever the fuck you said you got long enough.

Mike VO 28:28
Here’s the problem though. I thought about this. If California falls in the ocean, then all those spent needles and all that human feces goes in the ecosystem with democratic shit.

Unknown Speaker 28:46
The rest of the world is gonna starve

Unknown Speaker 28:47
anyway. Man, that’s great if they

Mike VO 28:51
see, if they can’t destroy us through handout programs that are not sustainable, then they’ll destroy us by poisoning all the food that we depend on. So Don’t go get for ourselves you know the first bike thing I don’t think really applies to you you kind of grew up riding bikes I had a first bike I mean what was your first bike? Would you wait we talked about this a Yamaha 650 maximum fuck yeah

Roy Merritt 29:14
yeah yeah

Ethan Elliott 29:16
it’s like you get to the point so my my access you can set the points on my access

Unknown Speaker 29:21
points do is Yamaha my my Yamaha

Ethan Elliott 29:24
has points. No it doesn’t.

Mike VO 29:32
told you that.

Roy Merritt 29:36
Actually, there was a guy about a crash. There was a guy back in Florida that had a xx 650 special. Oh yeah. That was super fucking clean. It was a beautiful bike. The black. I was like white and white. Most of our blade and blue. Gold rightist.

Ethan Elliott 29:57
maroon and gold and until I have the tank. My mom has it. And she asked me if I want it back. I’m like, Yes. Save the tank. I chopped it up most of the frame. Now. You still have the tank. I have the tank. Yeah, my mom has it. She didn’t send it back to me. But the frame from the neck down to like where the swingarm was. We chopped it and hardtail it. Yeah. And I took all the rest of the frame. The mid controls are still where they belong. Everything else were supposed to be. It’s still an excess 650 is still fires in its natural order. I didn’t rephase it or anything like that. And I’m going to ride this bike

Roy Merritt 30:36
soon, I hope.

Ethan Elliott 30:38
Especially if my dad ends up passing but I’m gonna read it riding that bike. Yeah, you know, first bike ever sat on I was five years old. My dad sat me on the tank of that bike and took me for my first ride ever.

Mike VO 30:47
So do you know easy points are?

Yeah, paperclip. No. matchbook cover, man. Yeah.

Yeah. You run it. You run it around until it sparks right when it sparks you said it. To the thickness of a matchbook cover, that’s it. Good to go. So here’s the only difficult part. Good luck finding a match book.

Ethan Elliott 31:10
I happen to have a collection of local seedy bars.

Unknown Speaker 31:17
Baseball match books you

Unknown Speaker 31:19
I thought they were they weren’t closing down.

Unknown Speaker 31:21
Okay, well, they’re not closing down

Roy Merritt 31:35
to a table. So I actually, technically my first bike was the Vulcan 750 my uncle and I think I’ve talked about this in a previous episode, my uncle like just like to buy shit. And he would never fucking use it. So he had jet skis and four wheelers and all this shit ever fucking use it. So we bought this is a 250 it looked like if you were to put round dish hard bags on a soft tail. Okay, Grace three lights, auxiliary lights everything full dresser okay. Yeah. And it was a 250 it was a Chinese knockoff of the Yamaha 250 the v star chief so it was like a Hugo you want to push me away? Right? So yeah, so when I when I needed parts for it, I would just buy the Yamaha parts and they fit and everything you know, were 10 times better the fucking Yamaha parts. But I probably put a couple thousand miles on that thing just riding around town. You know what I mean? Like, a couple miles at a time here and there and and I got the fuel for the road on a 250 you know, and while I rode that to work and back because I was living in an apartment in my uncle’s house, so I just pulled it out of the garage, wrote it to work, wrote it back, he didn’t give a fuck, you know. And he got ran. So it was better because every year he’d have to fucking rebuild the car and put new battery in and everything else you know. So I wrote this thing for quite a while and it’s And it was like any 250 you just can’t You can’t take them out of my way. You know, when you want to go downtown or somewhere you live 20 miles out of downtown, you’re not, you’re taking the long way. It’s like a Grom Yeah, you’re taking either the long wait an hour to get there, or you’re gonna put it in a trailer or something in a bike like that 250 little dresser things not worth putting in a trailer, you know, so I wrote it around town. And when I was ready to buy a bike, I kind of knew that I needed something more. I knew I had ridden leader bikes and this and that I knew I didn’t need that. I settled on that cow sock because I had so many little features. And I got it so cheap, and they made the same bike from 1986 206. So parts were super fucking easy to find for it. And if an 88 was broken down, mine was 94. If it 88 was broken down, I can take the parts out hit, you know what I mean? So I found parts everywhere and when I when I did all my research That I landed on that bike and I never regretted it. I’d buy another one in a heartbeat because it was so much fun to ride. I had a really good friend of mine we’ve taught he was on one of the episodes. He’s got the racing Sportster. He had a 83 the one that’s the racing Sportster. Now, his was pretty stocked some short shots and stuff on it. And I had my 750 Kawasaki. They were pretty matched on performance at his was mapped and stuff. So at about 100 to 110. He had a little pull on me, but up until then we were very close. And he actually jumped over on my bike. I jumped over on his and afterwards he was like, Fuck your bike handles better than mine.

Unknown Speaker 34:40
You know, he’s like, God damn it.

Unknown Speaker 34:43
So,

Roy Merritt 34:45
you know, it worked out for me. And when I went to buy another bike, I bought a Sportster because I like the small bike. I don’t do long touring. You know? I don’t I don’t I don’t think Don’t Don’t go on 700 mile ride. So

Ethan Elliott 35:02
let me ask you this, what do you think about the same? There are two types of riders, you either own a backer or you’re going to own a backer so

Roy Merritt 35:11
I believe that there is an evolution in everything. Okay, you know, there’s a point you reach in any sport, you know, whatever it is. So you play golf. You know, you start off you use these certain clubs you do this, I think there’s a point that you reach that everybody fucking hits calculators. And you know what I mean? You don’t I’m saying just in general speaking.

Ethan Elliott 35:31
And that’s how I got bagger is at some point, you’re going to improve your bag to a point where, well, you’ve got wind protection, you’ve got radio, you’ve got Sat Nav, you got everything you need. Well, it’s a lifestyle as you know, you set it up, right when

Roy Merritt 35:44
you’re younger, I think, you know, in the earlier years, you know, you work more and your writing style tends to be closer to home. I think as you get older and you’re working less your writing style, this should show destination riding and there’s no question that there is there’s no better bike to destination ride for hundreds of miles on a Harley touring every yeah every other manufacturers and there is nothing obviously

Mike VO 36:15
having written in Indian challenger

Roy Merritt 36:20
holy shit we get it we get the topic now you brought Indian because changing the game Have you heard about Indians new product that is changing the fucking game Have you heard no no I have a new seat that heats and cools fucking changing the game because they do that for fucking 30 if you’re if you’re an Indian writer then you need cooling and heating on your ass

Unknown Speaker 36:50
say because the same to just

Roy Merritt 36:51
yeah so they’re they’re they’re officially the first manufacturer to come out with a seat the heat I saw that

Mike VO 36:57
they also embarrassing Oh yeah, shielded moves. Up and down because

Roy Merritt 37:01
I don’t want a hot ass while I’m riding fucking cool that shit down you know I’m saying and you know I don’t ride in the cold anyways if I have an Indian so I don’t know what the heaters for you could just not be gay but then I wouldn’t own an Indian

yeah no I read that today cuz I was like oh I’m gonna look up motorcycle news news and see what’s cool maybe we talked about it tonight fucking garbage right now that was that was like the top of the news was Indians changing the game with their

Ethan Elliott 37:34
ears the news parts are hard to get he’ll yeah

Unknown Speaker 37:38
son of a bitch man if you’re not if you’re an Indian cuz

Roy Merritt 37:43
yeah nobody bought new Indian parts I should still sit in a warehouse but

Ethan Elliott 37:48
the fuck NGO hmm I didn’t think you would hit like this like it’s coming late. What like availability of parts? Well yeah of course it can

Roy Merritt 37:57
go to everything down and when you’re not Looks like now it’s getting tight. Yeah,

Mike VO 38:02
yeah this is about when I expected when it opens back up that’s when the display the supply gets tight because that’s what everybody goes back out and starts purchasing things. And they didn’t make anything three months ago right so there’s nothing on a shelf. Yep. So I’m just gonna play devil’s at there’s so many stupid fucking dealerships that give us all their stuff. Oh, we had buying it up like crazy. Yeah, yeah, we’re taking manifolds.

Unknown Speaker 38:24
Oh, yeah, we’ll take some of those

Unknown Speaker 38:28
scissors. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 38:33
So how many Yeah, like six. I will take all again. Yeah, devil’s advocate here.

Roy Merritt 38:39
If you were gonna buy a bike

Unknown Speaker 38:43
to do everything we’ve talked about, aside from

Roy Merritt 38:50
I mean, if we were gonna include off road that does change it, because we didn’t talk about it. That road is not in play, but aside from off road Harley touring bikes a hard choice not to say you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Mike VO 39:06
I don’t know man the bike that Kirk rode in the new Star Trek like the first remake it’s pretty fucking badass. What was it? It was 100 bike wheels or nothing? And it was electric. So you know it’s it’s all friendly.

Unknown Speaker 39:20
Oh yeah, you just green a Livewire for him

Unknown Speaker 39:22
is badass. I mean, yeah,

Ethan Elliott 39:24
I don’t know if I could have if I could have a live wire. I wouldn’t buy one. But he was cheap enough to just ride back and forth to work right. And I’d put on rain gear, and I’d suffer through it.

Mike VO 39:34
Well, look at it this way. You never have to buy gas again. My wife has that it’s called a volt.

Unknown Speaker 39:43
Yeah, he’s already already like

Ethan Elliott 39:44
that. She loves it. Well, the current 140,000 miles on it.

Mike VO 39:48
Now you can 40 140,000 miles on that car.

Unknown Speaker 39:52
Really? Yeah. So here you go.

Ethan Elliott 39:55
And it hasn’t

Unknown Speaker 39:56
missed a beat instead of like replace battery instead.

Ethan Elliott 40:00
Just battery on now once wow

Mike VO 40:03
but check it out instead of buying fuel for the next five years you have a car payment. What’s the difference?

Roy Merritt 40:10
I mean in the end right now that really isn’t it?

Unknown Speaker 40:17
Yeah, don’t worry I got curly

Unknown Speaker 40:19
Yeah, it’s a hybrid

Unknown Speaker 40:22
electric electric it’s an electric car

Ethan Elliott 40:25
it’s a generator on both

Unknown Speaker 40:29
the fucking Prius and that that was supposed to what crazy

Mike VO 40:32
shit.

Unknown Speaker 40:34
So again back to what I was saying I agree also

Ethan Elliott 40:36
Aaron but free isn’t driven by pretentious assholes. Right?

Unknown Speaker 40:40
Why does it

Mike VO 40:43
so

the fact that I’m a dick

Unknown Speaker 40:47
pretentious three types of people can

Unknown Speaker 40:49
highlighted you in all

Unknown Speaker 40:52
three types of people.

Roy Merritt 40:56
you’re you’re you’re

Mike VO 40:58
just with Eric dicks

Unknown Speaker 41:00
just like the fuck all this fair

Roy Merritt 41:03
just want to get fucked. But sometimes assholes need to get because if the digs don’t fuck yes holes, they just get shit on every

Unknown Speaker 41:14
time. I’m sorry.

Roy Merritt 41:16
One of my favorite things ever that is that three types of people yes, dicks policies and ask excuse wanna fuck all the time?

Mike VO 41:26
And geeks like the fuck pussies but they also funk asshole.

Roy Merritt 41:29
Yeah, that’s right. And if they didn’t get shit on it on every Budweiser, please. So, you know back to it. The reason that Harley sells so many touring bikes is that when you want to get out on the road, and go you can but if you want to just rip around town, those fucking bikes handle pretty good. You know, when properly we’ve set up Yeah, well, um, that will absolutely route finance today I wrote is I mean that Road Glide Get him done handlebars he needs to he needs to do that thing floats like a goddamn airplane when you get on but

Mike VO 42:09
you know what he doesn’t he doesn’t even know

Roy Merritt 42:12
yeah he doesn’t know any better I know he we have

Mike VO 42:14
another guy that has probably the single badass setup bike that we’ve done and it still has like the frickin knob yeah I wish

Unknown Speaker 42:30
this thing would just kill

Mike VO 42:31
you oh yeah dude everything in its path and he’s like

Roy Merritt 42:35
yeah oh yeah cuz I did I did I did Clements bike today 25 k neck bearing and all that so I want to make sure the thing handles right so I’m gonna go out ride it I’m gonna get it up to speed I’m gonna get on it a little bit because I fucking took apart the neck bearings you don’t mean to get hurt right? I think it’s good. I really close that front end. Listen Jesus Christ

Ethan Elliott 42:53
and and the power. I wrote that by the sounds of power radio and on the one to show Have to go 25 miles an hour. just laid it down, hammered second gear, and it laid down a 40 foot stripe. Oh absolutely second gear not even trying. Oh yeah, that was just a shift

Unknown Speaker 43:12
when we loaded that set up

Ethan Elliott 43:14
in that bike 128 128 521 Balzac header mK 45. Okay, legit

Unknown Speaker 43:20
frame setup

Aaron Staudinger 43:23
by magenta or Davidson

Unknown Speaker 43:27
don’t try that. No, yeah.

Mike VO 43:28
No and then get you.

Roy Merritt 43:30
So the other one is that silver fat Baba back are here the 128 D balanced 550 Dr.

Ethan Elliott 43:40
Yeah. Oh, dude guaranteed by Aaron.

Roy Merritt 43:42
Oh my god. Fuck, dude, I don’t even take that thing out on the road. I just blocked the fucking throttle out bad. shit myself. I was like, Fuck, it’s an

Ethan Elliott 43:51
hour. Come see us if you want to talk about like a real quick roving mic 615717775

Roy Merritt 44:00
Yeah, that’s

Ethan Elliott 44:00
right counterbalance one of these things and watch one half holy shit is that

Roy Merritt 44:04
thing to explain you know coming down the backstretch I blip bikes all the time and I hit that fucker and I was like oh shit reaching for the brakes like oh my god dude What did I do I didn’t mean to do that you know like

Ethan Elliott 44:16
again sounds up our video Montes bike I take off I wasn’t even trying days the tire and it just picked up the tire and took off for about 25 feet not even trying so I was just trying to feed clutch and it would let even

Roy Merritt 44:28
for 75 even the mild 124 128 setups you could break that back tire is so fucking easy. Oh yeah, I mean yeah. You know we’ve raised about man Yeah, yeah, we rave about the heritage is so much as 114 Heritage’s. There’s something about that bike I can’t handle so well we

Mike VO 44:47
need to find one of those and do a pic motor on it because

Roy Merritt 44:50
I just wouldn’t be able to do that on a spoke wheel. I’d have to get rid of those. To me if I was going to build a motor like that. I just I would be so nervous about this book wheels. Why I do deck things got a lot of power, man. I think you could rip those fucking spokes right off. I don’t think so. I think I’m telling I got on one the other day was a 475 114. That’s all we’re 465 114 and Jesus Christ, dude, all you got to do is dump the clutch in that thing. Give it a little bit of gas. We’ll earn the tire. Yeah, like those things. Yeah, I don’t know. Some pretty tough. I, it may be unfounded. It may be but that something about building 150 foot pounds of torque on on what they have on all the low riders.

Unknown Speaker 45:36
They’re fine.

Mike VO 45:37
Yeah, they’re jumping up on the ground.

Roy Merritt 45:39
Yeah, well, that’s true. The day we’re

Ethan Elliott 45:40
migrating to is for your first bike, which you want is a late model bike.

Unknown Speaker 45:45
Well, yeah, you know,

Mike VO 45:46
for your first bike, you want something that is reliable, and comfortable and easy. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 45:51
got it. That’s cool. You don’t

Ethan Elliott 45:55
fuck your carburetor. You

Mike VO 45:56
feel that for me? button and it starts and then you can ride it. get around and you get to where you go

Unknown Speaker 46:02
and it’s easy to get and you till you decide what type of rider Yeah,

Mike VO 46:05
and you don’t see where terminated and and

Roy Merritt 46:07
that was kind of the point of the topic is is when you haven’t ridden before and you’re getting into the sport you don’t know what type of rider you are.

Unknown Speaker 46:17
What is the topic? It’s Yeah.

Roy Merritt 46:21
The topic, so is your first purchase so so you know if it’s not a Grom you don’t know. No, I groms a good one.

Ethan Elliott 46:30
I actually like groms you’re gonna ride a Grom

Roy Merritt 46:34
No. Cable entry levels. Sportster, you’re fired. But that depends on what your plans are with it for me or a 600 I didn’t tell you I can easily put 1000 1500 miles before I ever got.

Mike VO 46:50
I want to build a huge ramp and jumping into a lake. What

Unknown Speaker 46:54
we buy Chinese grown cow Can you tell over a shark Yes. Sweet I can

Mike VO 47:00
I will

Roy Merritt 47:02
get a minibike Mike has jumped the shark is right here jump the shark

Unknown Speaker 47:07
Grom over can put your other

Ethan Elliott 47:09
jacket to yes oh fuck me I got one yeah like it

Mike VO 47:14
and I’ll jump over a shark

Roy Merritt 47:15
like a leather jacket

Unknown Speaker 47:17
just to kind of get back to what you were saying real quick though I do want to ask you know you’re talking about

Unknown Speaker 47:22
fucking with the holder soft jail is threatened him Aaron

Unknown Speaker 47:27
already threatened him today I told him I told a customer I’d go upside the back of his head

Roy Merritt 47:32
that’s cool Did you would mess up his hair I laughed at you.

Unknown Speaker 47:35
He did laugh

Unknown Speaker 47:38
I told him he couldn’t catch me anyways back on. Sorry about the older soft tails i mean but how would that even compare to say the the 124 and the 128 you’ve done on the low writers. I mean that low.

Roy Merritt 47:51
Here’s the deal for the Milwaukee eight even compare it. Nobody liked the heritage. Nobody liked any softail he did before too before the Milwaukee heritage softail was garbage. I mean, I don’t want to say garbage but it the new softail compared to an old softail it’s not even close. We had

Ethan Elliott 48:12
some motors gonna make

Roy Merritt 48:12
a turn without scraping boards and you know they lacked on power and they know they just so many

Mike VO 48:19
they just looked nostalgic. They had the Harley

Roy Merritt 48:21
mini roadkill. Yeah. So So for the most part when people picture a Harley Davidson, if you say Harley Davidson, they either picture a heritage softail or a touring bike. You know what I mean? A full dresser bagger, you know, limited wherever you want to call it that back in the day, we call them for dress

Ethan Elliott 48:40
full dressers. But I think that’s changing depending on what demographic you’re looking at. I mean, now you can ask some people and they’ll look at like, what do you see when you see a bagger? And they’ll look at,

Roy Merritt 48:49
you know, a road No.

Ethan Elliott 48:52
They’ll look at a Road Glide with chopper airbags suspension on it raised a little bit ready to frickin hustle. That’s what they see.

Mike VO 49:01
Well, I hate to say it but Jeff was part of that. Well, props to him as much as he’s a fucking idiot.

Unknown Speaker 49:11
Serious. What part of what

Mike VO 49:14
of pushing that performance bagger woman’s bagger? Yeah. Oh well he did a good job starting you know the working with guys like us that dipshit slimy guy California Big Bear.

Roy Merritt 49:27
Big Bear.

Mike VO 49:28
You know he worked a lot with those guys to like get it into the you know, so that the big wheel baggers they’re they’re stupid fucking cow they finally No, they’re not gone but

Roy Merritt 49:39
they’re still one of the fucking shop I’m building with a goddamn biggest wheel I’ve ever seen we can’t even fit it on a lift fucking retarded but yeah, it does look bad. So dream that it’s bad. What is it 23 by like six and a half or something. The fucking I’ve never seen a big tire. So So I talked to him about this. Because we’ve been having so much trouble with brake lines and everything else he said he don’t think anybody else has done the wide 23 with the big brakes and the fender, I don’t think it’s because nobody else wants to do what everybody else does in with the small stock breaks and shit like that. Because, you know, if you’re doing that shit, you’re probably half assed in it anyways, right? You know, but, like, nobody knew any of the things we’ve run into, you know, with stupid things like the angle of the fucking brake lines. Shit. Yeah. It was like, Man, I’m sorry, by force.

Ethan Elliott 50:36
I don’t want to break. I don’t want to break that ground in that direction. Yeah, please stop me if I break new ground in that direction. Oh,

Mike VO 50:44
you know what, though? It doesn’t matter. Because it’s, it’s all cool.

Roy Merritt 50:47
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s

Ethan Elliott 50:50
frickin right. It’s neat. Yeah.

Mike VO 50:51
And that’s what he wants to do. And it’s pretty cool because I mean, it’s a pain in the ass. Because, you know, you rack it and then you’re like, Well, fuck, this doesn’t work

Roy Merritt 50:58
you bracket that I did his break neck and all that the extended force and all that shit. So all I got to do is breaks now it’s not hard at this point, but it’s like, fuck man.

Mike VO 51:07
The hard part, the hard part to realize is that it doesn’t really matter what you like, it matters what the guy that’s giving you the money like,

Ethan Elliott 51:14
you know, someday when he’s a really good example it can be done.

Roy Merritt 51:18
He’s a really good example of kind of what we’re talking about now. The people that he is surrounded with now, no way he could ride that bike with us.

Ethan Elliott 51:27
No, no, no wouldn’t and that’s a good point. And that’s a good point. You never that’s what he was surrounded

Roy Merritt 51:34
by Chris on that bike a year after he does this 1000

Mike VO 51:40
rides a shoot out of it but he says it’s all like highway and any like goes to places and parks.

Roy Merritt 51:46
Yeah, fair. No.

Ethan Elliott 51:47
Fair and you’re not tearing shit.

Mike VO 51:48
I’m telling you right now Paul Yoffie isn’t ripping those fucking it will baggers up and down canyons. He’s riding them on the highway for a little while

Unknown Speaker 51:56
and nobody sees a trailer

Mike VO 51:58
yet. Nobody’s riding See, can you see all the all the videos of bagger nation and I have a lot of respect for Paul Yoffie because as far as that goes, you know he’s very innovative. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 52:10
He He’s made his

Mike VO 52:12
lashes and he’s got manufacturing down. So when something comes out he can he can go from concept to manufacturing fairly quickly, which is great. Because he isn’t just narrowed down. Like, you know, john shope, who just does big wheel baggers and john shops a fucking asshole anyway. But he doesn’t when you see all those videos of him riding to Sturgis, those videos are being taken from the fucking toy hauler with a big trailer back that 80% of the trip bikes are in that trailer and they’re going in the toy hauler, you know what I mean. So that

Roy Merritt 52:46
was one of the things I like back in the day back in the Discovery Channel biker days, where

Unknown Speaker 52:52
that’s what started everything.

Roy Merritt 52:54
Well, the ones where they had to build them and ride off the

Mike VO 52:57
biker build off. Those were cool and they would They have to go 1000 miles and ride it and meet.

Roy Merritt 53:02
Yeah, yeah, that that to me was cool.

Mike VO 53:05
And that’s that was the demise of choppers. Well, when that show aired that was the demise of the scene. Well and that’s where

Roy Merritt 53:12
when they did when they did the whole page again, Jesse James against OCC kind of thing when they did that, that was what separated the two is Jesse James is like I build fucking bikes to ride. You know, he’s like, I’m not building shit. It’s just gonna sit.

Ethan Elliott 53:28
I have a buddy back in California that has a cottage industry of picking up West Coast chopper frames dominators go CFLs and rebuilding them. Make him to customer spec sending them out. Yeah, all he does. Well, not only does he does baggers stuff he does service he does all that stuff.

Unknown Speaker 53:47
But like when they were doing it when

Ethan Elliott 53:50
they were doing custom bikes, he knows that he knows how to restore him. Yeah, he makes a badass, I’m sure. But But

Roy Merritt 53:57
when they were building, you know, these these really Custom bikes for these build offs they’re OCC and these guys were building bikes that didn’t really you know weren’t really for riding well you know, where he tried to stay in the writing zone.

Mike VO 54:12
That’s not necessarily true because OCC was doing it too but the difference was before it got on national television and caught on these guys didn’t have $20 million machines. Oh no, we’re making everything by hand. Yeah,

Ethan Elliott 54:26
and I hate to break it to you man what they were doing OCC was cake decorating it wasn’t making bikes

Unknown Speaker 54:31
Is it good? Yes,

Aaron Staudinger 54:33
no those guys

Unknown Speaker 54:34
are fucking good yeah yeah ball Jr. You got to give

Ethan Elliott 54:38
a really good Michael’s candy canes on and all kinds of shit. It’s just frickin stupid.

Roy Merritt 54:43
I mean, the snap on by you know, there was a lot of cool things that

Unknown Speaker 54:47
recycles. But

Mike VO 54:48
here’s something that you here’s something you don’t know. You know, when I was a kid growing up in the chopper scene and my dad had a little shop and we will did everything and we were cutting next and we were doing whatever when somebody said they want to Canada canes on their bike and they get you they put $10,000 on the counter you made fucking candy canes? Yeah, like, absolutely, because you weren’t going to get that $10,000 if you didn’t put candy canes on the bike, and you didn’t give a shit, yeah, and we’ll do all that by hand. And when when, when that show came out and they had the biker build off, that was the very first one that was the coolest thing ever. And it ruined it. It killed the whole custom because people didn’t understand how much it took you know how much money you don’t make any money on those custom jobs and a lot of that gets donated you did those back in the day just so that you could get your name out there. Yeah, and all you tried to do was get tires and services so that you could keep the lights on what about

Ethan Elliott 55:44
guys like Russell Mitchell though they actually like made stuff and built stuff all the shiny stuff

Unknown Speaker 55:49
all these guys

Unknown Speaker 55:53
that lived in a

Ethan Elliott 55:54
frickin shed built stuff and lost his fucking

Roy Merritt 55:57
motors. They were buying certain things they They say there were things that they bought a lot of their their their fucking their their vendors were giving them heavy discounts or, well, yes. They were building these plates on this show that nobody knew there was 100 fucking thousand dollars in that bike. That’s what killed it, you know what I mean? $100,000 easily and those bikes and they’re like, Oh, I don’t understand why we pay some money, you know,

Mike VO 56:24
before and before OCC and and these and they were like these huge corporate sponsors and stuff. I mean, somebody would pay $50,000 for one of those bikes and it would take a year to make it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean seriously, it would it would literally take you six months to a year. And I have to forget frames and a Donnie Smith varium in Arizona,

just sitting there from back in the heyday that, you know, they’re not worth shit now. But back then. I mean, you had a Donnie Smith frame hell, that’s a fucking $7,000 frame in 1992. Yeah. Because they’ll come

Roy Merritt 56:59
back You know though there’ll be a there’ll be a point where it’s like holy shit this is the coolest thing ever never come back I don’t know much about

Mike VO 57:07
the pro street I’ll never come back

Ethan Elliott 57:08
yeah well oh yeah

come back around no

Unknown Speaker 57:12
I think it will pro streets gone up Jamie agree with

Aaron Staudinger 57:16
the drag strip. It will not pro

Mike VO 57:19
street will not come back

Roy Merritt 57:21
to pro street it’s a pro stream is gonna make it the vibrato.

Mike VO 57:23
Yep. Pro streets done. That’s the point.

Roy Merritt 57:26
Yeah, you’re right v rods amazing destroyer.

Aaron Staudinger 57:28
The destroyer would still be here.

Mike VO 57:32
Yeah, the performance. It’s going to split. Rogaine

Ethan Elliott 57:38
has already become the drug of choice.

Mike VO 57:40
Yeah, they’re decorative. Well, that step

Roy Merritt 57:42
the touring frames

Mike VO 57:45
the decorative big wheel like let’s throw all this money and stretch bags and and all that shit. That’s gonna stay

Unknown Speaker 57:52
Oh, and you’re gonna have performance baggers and you’re gonna

Mike VO 57:55
have choppers. The choppers will never die because of the nostalgia and because of the hits. Right,

Ethan Elliott 58:00
like they have in drag racing. What have we ever lost algea drag racing

Mike VO 58:03
class

Ethan Elliott 58:04
and you have like hard tail chopper, drag race class,

Unknown Speaker 58:08
and be frickin fun.

Ethan Elliott 58:10
Because you got no suspension. You got nothing to worry about. It’s just you the clutch

Mike VO 58:15
those tires didn’t drag racing those guys just want to ride around in Missouri is that cruise and they only go they cruise at 55 miles an hour. You can’t even ride them with the drag strip.

Ethan Elliott 58:26
I’m saying if you want to make a class or drag race at eight miles an hour

I think I think you’ll clear 120 in a quarter.

Mike VO 58:35
Now one thing you have to remember

Ethan Elliott 58:37
on a 120 something cubic inch Twin Cam or something

Mike VO 58:41
I’m talking about like the old the old, you’re talking about, like rigid choppers. Yes, they are. They don’t go 120 you can make them go 120

you can make them go on 20 but you’re not going to the guys that own those bikes don’t want to go 120 they want to go 50 miles an hour and they want to have fun and they and they enjoy The upkeep of the bike as much as I enjoy riding the bike, right? It’s

Ethan Elliott 59:03
a moving model,

Mike VO 59:04
you know what I mean? Yeah, that’s

Unknown Speaker 59:06
Yeah. Moving models

Mike VO 59:09
on is like keeping it running and the maintenance that they have to do because you can’t get it.

Jamie Lima 59:15
The one thing you got to remember is all those hard tail bikes that you’re thinking of in someone’s garage, and they haven’t ran in years. Yeah, I mean, 90% of them. When you get them in the dealership, it was dealerships that people bring into won’t work on them. They’re around the price items real far down. resale value is really low. If someone’s gonna spend some money and go to the drag strip, they’re gonna throw a little bit money at it, and they’re not gonna want to choose a frame that’s gonna beat them up like that. That you know, it’s not engineered for it, so hey, do you

Ethan Elliott 59:47
still have that sucker punch Mike? That was over here. So dang man, I think came through twice and I ended up twice. I’m like, Damn man, I might want that is cool but me but

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Here’s a cool boy

Mike VO 1:00:01
you know that bike sold for what nine grand.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:03
What was your first like Jimmy and that bike sold for what?

Jamie Lima 1:00:07
26 Exactly. 7000

sir Sally was selling for high dollars back. What was your first bike? I was looking at this before 1977 Honda 50 z 50 okay with the little handlebar plastic screw downs you turn, and you push the bars forward and they they go down along the front of the fork that way. 1977 when you have a pickup truck, you picked up that 500 pound 50

and that was my

Roy Merritt 1:00:38
first hike. I mean, the little bikes are the best place to start. You know, and it’s kind of one of the things we’ve talked about is people tend to want to ride what’s cool, you know, all their buddies are riding their bikes and they want to buy a Hayabusa so they can outshine their buddies or whatever it is, you know. Buying The wrong bike in the beginning can be a hindrance on how much you ride.

Jamie Lima 1:01:03
Yeah, what we see coming through the dealership now is, you know, 10 years ago when you talk to someone was your first bike it was a little dirt bike, because people were riding all over in the 60s in the 70s. And there are all these areas for recreational riding. And everyone catered to that but as population has expanded, rules have gotten stricter as well. So riding areas, recreational areas for those little dirt bikes have shrunk to a minimum. So when we talk to guys now they’re coming in, they’re 25 years old, like well, your first bike and only this can be my first bike. Yeah, they don’t have that experience of a 50 of a 70 have an 85 or 110. So their first bike could be a street could be a Sportster. Could be a little rebel, you know, a little we talked about

Ethan Elliott 1:01:50
jumping in sooner than that I’ve seen a lot of like, first time softail first time Dinah type.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:55
Absolutely

Roy Merritt 1:01:57
not bad because softails in general, have a pretty Good seat height and a lot of comfortability when you’re riding comes with you know pulling up to a stop and just be comfortable with your feet flat and feeling like you can handle the bike you can can work as a first bike.

Ethan Elliott 1:02:12
I heard a lot guys that come off sport bikes,

Roy Merritt 1:02:15
and they go like, sure

Ethan Elliott 1:02:16
it’s my first bike. What are you riding roguelite Street Glide, something like that we see a lot.

Jamie Lima 1:02:22
coming straight from a sport bike, riding with their buddies going on a ride and coming home be like, forget I don’t want to do that again. Yeah, and their transition, they’re seeing the market. So we have a lot of first time riders going straight to a train our first time Harley owner, yep, straight to the touring platform. And we’re also seeing a smaller portion of first time riders going to that bagger too. But we do see more of them. If it’s a first time rider. They’re typically coming in on a Sportster. A lot of customers are coming in on the street because they took them in their class and they’re comfortable and they feel comfortable lies. So we’ve sold out a street. There was a Point last year we had to go get the streets they’re very very good first bike because it’s not a high dollar bike so you can ride it for a year year and a half and party pretty cheap yeah 20% of eight grand is smaller than 20% of a $20,000 bike so if you lose 20% after a year of riding in this and that that’s a lot a lot let’s drop

Roy Merritt 1:03:18
it the turn signals are like 15 fucking dollars seriously, we first time I saw him I was like, Are you kidding me? And I’m like holy shit. They really are like

Jamie Lima 1:03:30
sellers for first time entry right now we’re seeing is a St. Bob heritage, the iron, iron 1200 industry. Those are the main force and then a smaller percentage row King Street Glide Street Glide, special road ride road, those are

Mike VO 1:03:46
probably more the the older riders that are just getting into it. The

Jamie Lima 1:03:50
more guys transitioning from a sport bike, they’ve been on a bike for years going into Harley, but since they’re not first to motorcycling, they can now go up a level and they feel so that’s actually

Roy Merritt 1:03:58
a really good thing. Topic there because when you’ve when you’re in the world of motorcycles in general, I think it holds true because I’ve written metric and I’ve written Harley is, you know, you ride up to the biker bar and you pull up. There’s predominantly Harley’s there. When somebody asked you would you ride? I read it. You know, I, let’s just think about whatever it is, but when you write even a Sportster, I ride Harley one day, you know what I mean? And I think, I think that’s what really drives a lot of those conversions from metric to Harley is, man, we have a whole different world in Harley, you know, when you go to any dealership anywhere, and there’s something going on on the weekend, you know, if they’re not they suck, you know, there’s multiple, there’s good Yeah, Harley promotes the culture so well, and there’s so many people wearing shirts and tattoos and fucking everything. That I mean, how many people do you know with the cow? tattoo zero. Well, I mean everybody I fucking know is a Harley tattoo software I think you know a

Jamie Lima 1:05:05
couple points I want to make about this real quick so when you have a cow psyche Honda goldwing Today I talked to a goldwing he’s riding with a bunch of Harley guys. Okay 25 20,000 on rolling, called me days like I’m riding my Harley guys. So as you need our Harley, yeah, calls up. First time Harley owner buys a Harley. It’s one of our motors, boom, already two plus thousand dollar Harley first time ever buying a Harley. So you have the guy that’s riding a bunch of Harley owners that needs to be in the club bully, not partway in and cover them up. Then you have customers that go to one of these bike rallies. They have their Honda this net guess where they’re parking? their parking?

Roy Merritt 1:05:46
Yeah, they’re walking over.

Jamie Lima 1:05:48
Yeah, I’m here. Okay. So we see that happening. When they come to the dealership and they have a Harley, they pull the Harley up front and center. So when we go to look at their bike for a trade eval, it’s right there. When someone has metric motorcycle and I have to do. I’m like, where’d you park your bike? They’re like, Oh, it’s

Unknown Speaker 1:06:09
like, Are we good over there? we’re sweating. I’m like, Park over here. Park over there.

Jamie Lima 1:06:15
mindset. Yeah, of those riders we see them. They don’t even want to park close it. They want to come they want to participate. They want the Harley maybe financially not ready. Maybe they don’t know the pricing. They’re a little bit hesitant coming in, because they don’t know all the models. So when guys come in, and they don’t know that stuff, they are intimidated. You know, usually when I sit down with a guy like Oh, man, you’re way nicer than we thought you’d be. Yeah,

Mike VO 1:06:44
I still know I’ve gotten roped into going to some marketing class like when I was in Arizona, like six or seven years ago. And the guy was talking everybody and he said that the average person that is not like they didn’t grow up in the Harley. world goes past a dealership 11 times before they decide they can go in yeah because they have this stigma that like the Sons of Anarchy are inside. Yeah. And they’re just waiting for some outside guy to come in to rob

Unknown Speaker 1:07:19
weird and the best part about that is

Roy Merritt 1:07:24
the only motherfuckers that are writing these things have money these dudes are lawyers and fucking you know they’re they’re successful people. Well you don’t you’re not broke is fuck riding a Harley. There’s a bunch of methods. more money than us because they’re riding

Unknown Speaker 1:07:44
Harley rider,

Jamie Lima 1:07:45
tattoos, beard, long hair, been doing it forever. All leather. He’s the hardest guy ever. He’s probably like 5560 right now gets home. He’s got grandkids and guess what he wears when he goes to bed. He’s probably got like some pajamas. As with Elmo on fluffy,

down in a way when you go to a, you gotta remember people are still people. I mean he gets all this big gnarly bikers pajamas.

Roy Merritt 1:08:14
We talked about that stigma, if you will, that Harley has in the writing world, which is you know, it’s almost a Ferrari esque stigma to lil Italy and, and really good example as we were talking earlier about meeting up with the guys riding on Friday night so we met up with these guys in Nashville and dude pulls up and he’s got his truck and trailer fancy fucking probably 100 grand and both you know, and he’s got a sport bike a stunt bike and a Grom for his girlfriend in the back the Grom

Yeah, any any any talks, he rolls up, you know any kind of rolls down his window, and he’s like, Fuck, man, y’all are on Harley’s. And he’s like, Ma’am, I’m fucking He’s like, I brought my you know, my stunt bike. He’s like, I’m not really good that good on my Harley. You know, he’s like, I’ve been wanting to try to stand on it more If I’d known y’all were, you know, On Harley’s, I brought my Harley. One of the guys like, Yeah, I just lost all respect for you.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:08
Anyway, I really Yeah, I was like, dude, you

Roy Merritt 1:09:10
stuff like, nobody gives a fuck about that thing. You know, get your Sportster and let’s wheelie that, you know? Yeah, but it even fits into that world is, you know, I think guys have been stunning sport bikes for so long. That is kind of old hat. You know, to me. Oh, wow, you did a wheelie.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:27
Even though you

Roy Merritt 1:09:28
know when you go now when you grab it? Yeah,

Jamie Lima 1:09:30
when you go to a sport bike shop today, you’re like, Hey, where’s your mixer? 1000 like, oh, a mixer. want that you want to look at a chicks 1000 It’s a unicorn that’s lost in the woods. And like, Oh my god, they sell like two or four a year. And when I was in the sport bike roll, it’s like the Jackson 1000 was the pinnacle. CBR 1000. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:51
And it’s like, sometimes you’re a newbie, but you’re like, I don’t want the 600 I got it. Okay, so you can make the seven families

Unknown Speaker 1:10:04
was a nasty bike

Jamie Lima 1:10:11
came from that is gone. Now the big leader bike is like your 600 and now it’s a 350 and a 500. This is where the sport bike really there is 1000 but they’re like unsellable. Well the modern 600

Roy Merritt 1:10:25
miles or so Mater 600 like an RR is every bit of power that you need. Now for a guy like me that six foot three, it tends to be a bit short and small. But a leader bike is way too much power. We talked about this earlier. Right here, first gear

Jamie Lima 1:10:43
redline at 98

Roy Merritt 1:10:44
Yeah, we were talking about this like right here right here Jimmy’s called the CH two supercharged leader bike.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:51
Is that the h2?

Roy Merritt 1:10:52
Yeah, so horrible first like I mean this bike if you do not know how to ride will absolutely kill that it will kill you. First sport bike I would have bought

Unknown Speaker 1:11:01
it Yeah, you killed yourself if you

Ethan Elliott 1:11:03
live in California I would have

Jamie Lima 1:11:10
ever my first road bike purchase ever was a gixxer 1000 I was writing all my buddy six hundreds that were beat up and worn out and I dropped it off to my work and I leave work and I hit this back road in the first corner turning out of the pocket parking lot of work. I hit the gas and I was like completely let go the throttle and I look for a second and grab my girls like okay, I bought a 1000 Yeah. I don’t

Roy Merritt 1:11:41
know if it made it into this one or the previous recording but me and me and Aaron shared a very similar both of our experiences. The first time on a liter bike were pretty much the same thing except we went up on one we’ll put it back down and said that’s way too funny.

Ethan Elliott 1:11:57
guy that had an r1 that lived across Straight from me that had BST wheels on this bike before this was in like 2003 2004. Before I knew what BST wheels were, and he had him and I rode this bike and it was like all the Yamaha sport tuning all the stuff on it. And at that point, I was like, Okay, cool. I’ll hop on this bike take up the canyons did thing you can down the road, hammered it. And without even trying the thing fucking stood up about three feet, and then lay down and then the next year it stood up again and I went Holy shit.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:33
Yeah. Holy fuck. This thing is crazy.

Ethan Elliott 1:12:36
Yeah, give me off it. I kind of like white fist in my chest, right?

Roy Merritt 1:12:47
It was. Yeah, it

Ethan Elliott 1:12:49
was fucking nuts. Like, yeah,

I had raised oval track for that point for probably eight or nine years and I was still racing and

Roy Merritt 1:12:56
you will never include you leave it like that. Limit

Jamie Lima 1:13:00
well I fell into this motorcycle industry fell into it. And I was racing the mud trucks racing the cars. And I remember having a Jackson 1000 have pipe on it. I put Yoshimi or cams. I had it tuned. And I remember doing a wheelie, hitting it where it was past my balance point hitting the brake before the front end, got down, hammer on the throttle again

and pull the front wheel.

really hit the brake front and falling hit the gas can pull it right back up to wheelie. I was like, this is kind of cool.

11 grand, my race car motor was like 14 grand. And I was like, Okay, this is probably the one I can afford to hotrod on. And what’s cool now is all the guys that had those sport bikes back then, are hitting the Harley market for Korea, because they want to be comfortable. So the guys that were like hold on the 18 to 30 that had those Harley’s and now they’re between 25 ish, let’s say till about 40 those guys that had those sport bikes are now moving into the Harley scene. There’s the dark side and they want and that’s why we’re seeing the performance bagger.

Ethan Elliott 1:14:10
So if the dark side is so strong, why in the world am I hearing about how Harley is struggling? We’re not gonna make it. Bla bla bla bla

Jamie Lima 1:14:22
let me let me let me give you the

Harley’s the number one. Okay. More motorcycles anyone, but we’ve gone down 14 was kind of the pinnacle year we came at the Rushmore, we crushed it. And Harley produced too many bikes. They got greedy. Too many bikes just too many out there. So supply and demand. Plus the market went down a little bit for everyone. Yeah, what’s happened is the US market right now is the highest it’s ever been used Harley’s record breaking sales on us and the reason being is because a Street Glide used to be 20 grand. When street glides were 20 grand. We were selling way more new Now your base model your, your least expensive Street Glide special, which is the one everyone wants is 27 five roughly. Okay, so now it’s 27 five, some of the guys that were on the border have not been before to $20,000 bike are now out. So if they want a $20,000 bike they have to buy used. So because the prices of the new units have risen to like 30 grand for those bikes, it’s driving more people back to the pre market so Prio markets on fire Harley new bike sales are down. But the new US bike sales are up beyond we have a new bike sales

Roy Merritt 1:15:37
12 bikes.

Jamie Lima 1:15:39
Well, even before that, I mean, it’s been going on for like, six years.

Ethan Elliott 1:15:44
Louder, more about the culture of the bike and the type of bike we make and the type of bike we build, rather than like,

Mike VO 1:15:50
Well, a lot of that though, is some of that you have to attribute to like the culture, the culture Yeah. Because another thing that you got to that you got to look at is like culturally, the attitude that Harley has is not what they’re trying to post as popular. You know that culturally they’re trying to say motorcycles are dangerous. They’re trying to say that outlaws are dangerous bad boys are dangerous. Everybody needs to conform. So culturally, you’re on the outside of of the what they want to portray as the norm.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:24
That’s the best thing you could do for us, though.

Mike VO 1:16:26
Well, yeah, we address that. Please.

Roy Merritt 1:16:29
Feed it. Yeah.

Mike VO 1:16:30
And here’s another here’s another element you got to look at when you have like the new challenger Indian, who has almost no market if you sell 100 motorcycles, so they have a seat that cools your ass.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:46
It’s only it’s only 1200 dollars. How many?

Mike VO 1:16:49
Last year how many motorcycles did Harley sell? Like 250,000

Roy Merritt 1:16:55
I don’t know if I do know I do know that last year but you got it.

Jamie Lima 1:17:00
250,000 the US market was like 600,000.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:05
But but it’s probably more like 40,000 because

Roy Merritt 1:17:10
well, yeah, worldwide last year Honda sold like 20,000 motorcycles which was 23% of market share. Okay, usually Harley hovers around 25 to 26%.

Mike VO 1:17:22
Harley’s 50% of the market it’s like 26. But you’re okay, you’re comparing. Let’s let’s me in the middle and say Harley sells 80,000 bikes. And then the next year Harley sales 80,000 bikes.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:39
Okay.

Mike VO 1:17:41
Harley sales are in the toilet. Yeah, because they sold the same amount last year as they did this year. Indian sells 100 motorcycles and then the next year they sell 110. Their sales are 10% Yeah. You know what I mean? All these other motorcycle companies aren’t down as much because they don’t have Nearly the volume so when you sell the the pure amount of motorcycles that Harley does your numbers look pale in comparison to your competitors because if Harley owns 50% of the market, and Okay, what we’ll say 40% and every other manufacturer out there owns the other 60% how many other manufacturers are 10?

Roy Merritt 1:18:21
Man? Well, no, there’s like five major, a Honda Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki, and Harley,

Mike VO 1:18:27
Ducati and KTM. UK

Roy Merritt 1:18:29
Ducati doesn’t sell nearly enough. Surely, again, they don’t sell nearly enough, but

Mike VO 1:18:36
it doesn’t matter. They all share the other 60% Yeah, so you have a company like a brilliant who sells 1000 units a year. The next year they sell 1050 Well, their fucking sales are doing great because they sold 50 more motorcycles, whereas Harley sales 100,000 then the following. Sell 100,000 there suck they suck because their sales are falling.

Roy Merritt 1:19:02
The US market share is 49% but I’m gonna keep looking here I’m fairly certain that worldwide on road sales hardly hovers around the 26% market share if I remember correctly

Jamie Lima 1:19:24
let me know ahead of time so you’ve printed on bringing

Ethan Elliott 1:19:29
this guy now

Unknown Speaker 1:19:33
do we do he wants no

Jamie Lima 1:19:35
prep whatsoever? Hey, your podcast is going downhill until I got on.

Mike VO 1:19:49
There not running the data behind the statistics. It’s no different than journalism. That’s all I

Unknown Speaker 1:19:54
know. But but a different machine. Oh, hold on. I

Jamie Lima 1:19:56
want to talk about what’s going on with these may fit back to why We’re losing stuff. So all the manufacturers we’re not losing shit. Right now what’s happening? The car rolled all of them are having this problem. A brand new diesel truck. Let’s say oh 545 grand. You get the King Ranch that did not like 45 grand. oh five. Yeah, 15 years. That same truck 9580 let’s say 80 $80,000 it’s almost doubled. So what’s happened in the market is these manufacturers to get people to trade in the guys with endless funds to trade in

Unknown Speaker 1:20:40
year, every year every two years. What do they do?

Jamie Lima 1:20:43
They make it better. Let’s add ABS let’s add traction control. Let’s add a TV screen Apple play. Let’s add heated seats, heated steering wheel backup mirrors, mirrors all over the trailer every time they add one of these things. It’s awesome. price goes up Two

Roy Merritt 1:21:00
grand, two grand,

Jamie Lima 1:21:01
two grand. We’ve added so much stuff that now we’ve taken people out of the market that would buy new because the price is so high that 30% of the market that used to buy new can’t even afford them, right. It might even be way higher than that and Harley’s done the same thing. Abs standard, okay, now they have bigger motors. Okay, now we have cooler rims on them. Now they have infotainment center. Now they have a touchscreen. Now they have already RS we’ve added all these features and what they do is for more sales we need to add more, add more features, add more features and raise the price but when the price goes high, people drop off because they can’t afford it. But here’s the other problem you face. Once you come out with that bike with all that stuff on it. No one wants to buy a Street Glide standard. What’s that Street Glide stand they want the Street Glide special, right? No one wants to buy the low end one. So we came out with like a stainless steel plant. We came out with that but they don’t want it they want this they want the shiny thing that was like the biggest radio Problem is instead of buying the new one, they’re like, Hey, here’s one that’s three years old. 5000 miles on it

Roy Merritt 1:22:07
only looks pretty good. I might

Jamie Lima 1:22:08
buy that one. And that was 20 grand. I can’t afford a 20. And that’s what’s happening. So

Unknown Speaker 1:22:13
I have coca

Unknown Speaker 1:22:14
back in the car industry. What was this late 60s early 70s. He redesigned every Chrysler right Chrysler’s save Chrysler Dodge Lee Iacocca after Chrysler,

Unknown Speaker 1:22:26
no, no, he wolf.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:27
Yeah, he the Ford Pinto was him.

Roy Merritt 1:22:29
Yeah. Ford. F. Yes. It was him.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:33
But well, he came out Chrysler the minivan. Yeah.

Roy Merritt 1:22:35
Lee Iacocca. He ran a little bit

Jamie Lima 1:22:38
No, no, he came into Chrysler, save that company with what was the car he came out with. They hit the mark a car and it was

Unknown Speaker 1:22:49
the 80s it was a

Jamie Lima 1:22:50
car he came out with a model that was cheap for the masses. My

Ethan Elliott 1:22:53
dad drove a cake.

Jamie Lima 1:22:55
Here Listen, he reinvented what was going on. reinvent The car industry that we knew for sure was awesome. He made it. He made it cheaper. He made it convenient, economical. So and boom, record breaking sales. It wasn’t a Pinto. What was the one the Dodge duster?

Roy Merritt 1:23:14
So I have a socialist idea.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:17
Look it up. Look, this

Roy Merritt 1:23:19
is not you don’t want to know what I looked up here. So side by side project, you’re gonna stay

Jamie Lima 1:23:23
on this because this is a very important thing right here. So the moment in motorcycling that we’ll hit is when someone comes out with a bike like he did back in the car industry. record breaking sales, it’ll happen. We don’t know what it is. It’ll happen and then everyone will copy it partly comes out the Indian everyone’s on board and he comes out with everyone’s on board. Ford Pinto.

Roy Merritt 1:23:48
Yeah, reviving Chrysler in the 80s.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:50
Yep. And what did what was the first one here? It’s got to be the KKR.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:56
No, but interestingly enough, it says that

Jamie Lima 1:23:59
or Pinto He did the four days before he went to crest. Yeah, so the Ford Pinto came out and it came out as a cheap economical vehicle. And when they came out who Chevy came out with the one it was the Was it the yeah Chevy Chevette the Chevette came out and then the Dodge Shuster came out to compete so he came out with this first. Everyone saw the sales record breaking sales crushed every number we ever knew. Everyone had to make a car to compete. The dodge a What did that tell me? What did they know but that was at the Pinto was the first one

Roy Merritt 1:24:31
right but so Ford Mustang continental model

Jamie Lima 1:24:35
was a small car you could fit four people in cheap. The caravan take revolutionize everything. Because now and the major family no longer had to cram everyone in the station wagon. Yep, the minivan came out. So he was in front of the industry moving it forward. And right now we’re kind of stagnant in the motorcycle industry. We’re just reinventing the same stuff and changing them. No one’s brought Harley hasn’t brought a new successful model to market that has changed Harley since

Unknown Speaker 1:25:07
the Street Glide. Yeah,

Jamie Lima 1:25:10
yeah. The Street Glide said we haven’t brought a new model to market. It’s not like we brought out FX Drs. Oh my god, it’s record breaking sales. Evie, record breaking sales.

Roy Merritt 1:25:20
History, great bikes, and they don’t become popular until 10 years later

Unknown Speaker 1:25:26
well, and part of that new, a new bike that will come out will come out eventually. I think

Ethan Elliott 1:25:33
the new platform honestly I think he has a better mileage Reisman, I wrote that thing the other day. And I swear to God, I have never written something that got my heart pumping. So I’ve heard the Livewire he’s

like Harley is a different thing.

Roy Merritt 1:25:53
They’re not gonna produce enough of him to make a difference on

Ethan Elliott 1:25:57
point a sport bikes. It’s it’s Completely different machine when the lineup you’re on Harley Livewire,

Jamie Lima 1:26:04
the problem with live wire, it’s out of the pricing. Yeah, right

Unknown Speaker 1:26:08
out of the pricing make that

Jamie Lima 1:26:10
16 999 we so pletely

Roy Merritt 1:26:13
different since when I talked to Harley about this, they wanted, they really wanted to put that bike out at 20 grand. That was their goal it could have. But they, they did it. That was their goal from the beginning when they started this, like 14 or whatever. And they started doing this and I was in classes talking to people, their goal was to hit that at 20 grand, they can go

Jamie Lima 1:26:31
back if they were to relaunch it, they would instantly try to hit that now that they know what they know. Yeah, and now that they’re it’s a relaunch and it’s gonna fix it. The problem

Roy Merritt 1:26:40
is, is they would have to go from seven or 800 a year to 3000 a year in order to bring them down to $20,000. Well, let’s go back to taking a really big gamble. Are we gonna sell 3000 of these a year? You know what I mean? That becomes Again while

Unknown Speaker 1:27:00
they sold 3000 3000 under done? Oh, I

Roy Merritt 1:27:02
think I think so I think that

Unknown Speaker 1:27:04
Yeah, 2000 dealers, I mean, 600 dealers,

Roy Merritt 1:27:07
they were only making seven or 800 a year. So we’ve only had them a year or so. So they couldn’t have made more than 1500 of them.

Mike VO 1:27:15
I think one of the issues

that Harley has, is

they they don’t launch their new platforms very well. First of all, they came out with a new Street Glide that was a stripped down Street Glide. Cheaper, let you know, it didn’t have all that didn’t have all the bells and whistles didn’t have the radio, and they called it a standard. Yeah, like that’s the stupidest fucking name you can and then they did it again with the soft tail. Yeah. Like, what the fuck? Why would you call anything the standard? Why don’t you call it something that would be in

Jamie Lima 1:27:49
a meeting with Harley about the name. So I had a meeting with them after they brought it out and I said you had a Street Glide. And you had a Road Glide. It was the alley glide valleys not as bad Big it’s a little narrower behind Valley glide wants to say I got a standard.

Mike VO 1:28:05
And sadly, one day, you know

what they do?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:11
When I’m done with it, it’s gonna be called Valley glide.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:14
I like the valley.

Mike VO 1:28:17
Look at what they did with the Live Wire. They had a couple of celebrities riding around. I say, Oh, this is awesome. And then they fucked up the launch. They recall them. You couldn’t get him for three months. And then and then when they then when they finally arrived to the dealership, they were like over it.

Jamie Lima 1:28:36
This This to me. Mark was this is a 100% or several sold. Yeah, because that long Yeah. Where there was a problem for that little window. Everyone got nervous. This is 100% Nope.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:49
Normal for Harley. No think about 72 What an awesome bike right. apes awesome pink 1200 Everything fucking great bike. couldn’t sell them. Well no not fucking sell it. No the default rate bike. Now if you get a 72 used you can’t keep that motherfucker on the lot. Well the seven series

Unknown Speaker 1:29:12
was a great bike the problem you have is everything in sales

Unknown Speaker 1:29:20
is cost driven.

Jamie Lima 1:29:22
Well you got to figure out what does a salesman make when he sells a Sportster compared to a bigger bike. So when someone comes in on sports are the problem you have in a lot of dealers is instead of leaving them on the Sportster, so you can take them from a Sportster to a softail or from a sports or to a diner. They move them straight to the softail or the touring bike is what they try to go Yeah, salesman makes a little bit more money. It’s a customer is eventually going to go there. But if you had if you had a dealership and every salesman wrote a Sportster, record breaking sports or selling dealership, because people are gonna sell what they love, so the best thing you can do, is it dealership is you can hire someone sales rep Sportster hire someone sales that rides a dime every day. hire someone sales that rides a softail Yeah, that rides a touring bike that rides trike. If you have a dealership and you have each salesman writing each one of your bikes, one guy Livewire, guess what? That sales rise a Livewire is gonna sell more live wires than anyone else. If the guy riding sports was gonna sell more, you got to think take the demographics of Harley Boyer most costs are most employees riding a Harley? Probably touring bikes, we sell more touring bikes and anything.

Ethan Elliott 1:30:32
I’ve got a great idea. I think that all of our employees should be given

Unknown Speaker 1:30:41
some fucking nice bikes. Yeah. Yeah.

Roy Merritt 1:30:53
And like I was saying, we’re back to a normal launch. Hold on, hold on. The V rod was in a Amazing motorcycle could not sell them well in the very beginning actually sold drugs records yeah I was gonna say the very beginning they sold pretty good but they were hard to sell the so many bikes that Harley has put out become cool later you know what I’m saying? Like they don’t they don’t you don’t have to worry about that I fix it all in post um yeah I get rid of all that in post but this had to take off that microphone. Yeah

Unknown Speaker 1:31:31
That’s right. That’s right it was absolutely right.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:35
Yeah, you can still hear it though through our mics Yeah, he’ll he’ll fix all that.

Mike VO 1:31:40
You won’t you won’t hear them talking

when it’s done.

Roy Merritt 1:31:51
Everyone but that sounds good senior wrong. Because the guys, the guys that are on touring bikes have no fucking interest in Riding a Harley. The guys are on dirt bikes have no interest in riding a Harley. There’s Kawasaki makes things that Harley doesn’t make that you cannot compete with. So the guys that are riding hard Kawasaki touring bikes, yes they want to ride Harley’s

Unknown Speaker 1:32:15
all the brands the guys that are on sport bikes, they don’t give a fuck about a Harley, because Harley doesn’t make anything that competes with it except for the Livewire. And nobody wants one.

Jamie Lima 1:32:26
Well, here’s something else that happened a lot of people don’t think about everyone’s like indian indian at all. They came up challenger copy and Harley was Indian, Indian for the Harley dealership. And for Harley owners The best thing that happened to Harley in a long time. Oh, yeah. Because now Indian before Harley would run the same chassis with the same motor for a extended period and

Unknown Speaker 1:32:49
every change what’s

Unknown Speaker 1:32:50
new this year? We got purple.

Roy Merritt 1:32:54
Yeah, Scott snow. Yeah, pinstripe. Absolutely. This is Custom two colors, you can get to color one color.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:03
Next year, it’s

Unknown Speaker 1:33:04
got tubeless

Jamie Lima 1:33:06
tires on spokes. And they won’t change anything because there’s no competition. They had the market cornered. So what the competition has done to Harley is Harley is now bringing new models to market faster than we ever had. They’re nitpicking more stuff than we ever had. We’re coming out with better machines than we ever had. The middle way is made Harley a better company because, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:33:31
the, the enemy of great is good.

Jamie Lima 1:33:34
Yep. Yeah, the enemy of great is good. We were really, really good for a long time. We could have been greater but making newer stuff quicker, but it’s like, do we want to spend all that money on manufacturing? Do we want to spend all that money on tooling? Because when you come up with a new model, what they don’t realize is all the money it takes for all the new equipment at the assembly plants in New York, and well plus the obsolescence

Ethan Elliott 1:34:00
Everything when you buy a Harley product is you understand like it is tested. Like to the nth degree. Yeah, absolutely it is. pounded, tested, shaken, stirred upside down burned

Mike VO 1:34:11
where you really see that in a shop is when you do it when you do accessories because when you buy Harley accessories out of a PNA catalog they fit, right? Oh yeah. When you when you buy things out in the back, you have no fucking clue what’s gonna happen. When you get that bolts on in minutes. You don’t have a clue what’s about to happen when you open up the package. And if they do have instructions, I mean, it was like typed up by

Roy Merritt 1:34:36
well, and that’s what drives exactly what you’re talking about is what drives the models running for so long. Yeah, is that Harley has so many products that they offer for their bikes, that doing two or three year model runs would not work for the way Harley operates in their in their p&l They, you know, in the aftermarket stuff, if they were changing everything every two or three years, that PNA catalog would be a nightmare. But they’re doing it. We’re doing it now. They’re getting into it now. Yeah, getting into it.

Jamie Lima 1:35:12
So we’re about to drop with Harley.

Mike VO 1:35:14
The nice thing that Harley has though, and that is we have the background of the PNA accessories and being and being able to engineer them to fit that when they make subtle changes, they can come out with the accessories that will fit. Now granted, it gets more difficult on the front line because we have to pay more attention to the fine print. Like this fits all these models except this one. Yeah, it only fits this model. If you have this model, you need this accessory. So it’s more difficult for us navigate to the fine print, but they have the model down better than any manufacturer so that every two or three years they can make those changes. And they can they can keep let’s always move on as hard. You know, you ride any metric manufacturer and ride into that dealership, tell them you want something cool For your bike and tell me what happens.

Roy Merritt 1:36:02
They got shit. They get they have OEM parts. And, you know, very little aftermarket, you know, guaranteed nothing in stock. I can tell you that, because I’ve been there, you know, and your choices are going to be to you know what I mean? two choices. That’s what you’re gonna get. When Harley you come in, you’re like, I want to buy a seat for my Sportster and the parks guys look at you like you’re dumb. Because they’re like where do you want to start? You know solo to up? You know, are you Where do you want to start you want to gel seed you want you know, what style are you looking for? What’s your bike look like? Are you chrome? Are you black? Are you colored? You do so many you know your your blue bike you on blue stitching, whatever the fuck it is. There’s so many options.

Mike VO 1:36:49
But when those hippies articles come out, there’s no they don’t have the scope of thing because these guys don’t. Most of them don’t ride motorcycles. If they do They ride like a GP a pillow and they just ride bikes for like Motor Trend magazine just to write the articles. Yeah, you know what I mean? So they don’t understand the depth of

the brand. You know what I mean? Yeah, the depth of the machine. I mean, there’s so many differences. It’s like driving it. When you have a jeep.

How can you compare it to a Volkswagen bug? You’re so goddamn sexy when you’re drunk. Between

Ethan Elliott 1:37:35
the reality of how you actually use a bike, like yeah, I mean, there’s different,

Mike VO 1:37:40
like, does a race bike sounds cool as hell.

Ethan Elliott 1:37:44
Does it sound like fun to drive a Top Fuel dragster to work everyday? Hell yes. Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun until you drive you want to

know you won’t know you want like

Unknown Speaker 1:37:54
a Corvette. I know

Mike VO 1:38:12
As I get older I realize things

Ethan Elliott 1:38:16
compare this way. Do you drive a Top Fuel dragster to work every day? Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun but in reality no like, do you want to live in that motherfucker would vibrate your tank. And so

I knew before they vibrate my day until I wasn’t miserable it’s

Roy Merritt 1:38:41
I think we’re wrapping up the end of this. We are way off topic, but we stayed on motorcycles so

Unknown Speaker 1:38:49
I’m okay with but you know, it’s

Roy Merritt 1:38:55
it’s back to you know, the, what we we kind of started the topic on we You know, their bikes are built for a purpose, you know, a, a softail or, let’s say a Sportster in my age 83 is not meant to ride across country. No, you know, it is not like comfortable. If you, your friends are out riding, doing 500 miles, trips,

Unknown Speaker 1:39:21
you don’t want to buy a Sportster.

Roy Merritt 1:39:23
You’re gonna buy a Sportster. Maybe because it’s in your price range. But you’re going to realize very quickly that it is the wrong bike for you. You know, and it works in in every aspect. Like I said, every manufacturer makes so many different bikes for a reason. If you live out in the country on dirt roads and things like that, and you buy a fucking softail you’re probably gonna regret it, you know? But get yourself the new, what is it the pan America is coming out. I really believe that new platform is going to be something special. I mean, if if if the Power ratings are what they said. And they build the bike the way it looks. I think we’re gonna be it’s gonna be a badass

Unknown Speaker 1:40:09
with the good job.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:14
We’re gonna be

Unknown Speaker 1:40:16
that’s gonna be smoked

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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