• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

In Spain, production motorcycle crashes by 36%

I have been thinking about this some lately. We reported a few months ago that GG was posting a profit for the year. But I don't remember right off what the period actually was. I just posted a similar report about overall Euro motorcycle sales. It is not as bad, but is still double digit losses over prev year. Spain is not in very good shape in general. New PM just came into office and I think that means more austerity measures.

http://www.enduro360.com/2011/12/26/featured/euro-bike-market-outlook-bleak/

What it really has me scratching my head about is the Ossa and Jotogas new bikes. Awesome concepts, but just seems to me that these are pipe dreams and have very little chance at seeing a showroom floor. Is there really enough market to justify two, totally new, two stroke only manufacturers? I hope the best for Gas Gas. I like the bikes, but they always seem a day late when it comes to business practice. Of course I am talking at the factory level.
 
I think husky and all the new bikes getting ready to be released is really thinking outside the box.The eco bike,nuda,and the new vintage bike should keep them afloat for years to come.I guess it really comes down to money a how many people can actually afford them.Wonder what keeps aprilia buoyant there scooter lineup.Tough times.
 
I am not so sure. Yes, there is lots of activity from Husky, but much of it is just slapping a badge on design concepts that are based off existing BMW platforms. Nobody needs updated two strokes more than Husky. That is the kind of new concepts we should be seeing. I am not entirely sure BMW's idea of where to go with the company matches what American dirt bikers are looking for.

There is thread on TT where someone is asking about race experience on 449/511. So far no real replies. That is to say, I can't think of one notable racer in the entire country that has spent his own money to campaign a 449 bike. Surely there is someone, but it seems that Husky really needs to do some grassroots work to get peoples confindence going.

So is Husky going to become the other big euro off road manufacturer to challenge KTM, or are they headed in some completely new direction?
 
Chilly said:
I am not so sure. Yes, there is lots of activity from Husky, but much of it is just slapping a badge on design concepts that are based off existing BMW platforms. Nobody needs updated two strokes more than Husky. That is the kind of new concepts we should be seeing. I am not entirely sure BMW's idea of where to go with the company matches what American dirt bikers are looking for.

There is thread on TT where someone is asking about race experience on 449/511. So far no real replies. That is to say, I can't think of one notable racer in the entire country that has spent his own money to campaign a 449 bike. Surely there is someone, but it seems that Husky really needs to do some grassroots work to get peoples confindence going.

So is Husky going to become the other big euro off road manufacturer to challenge KTM, or are they headed in some completely new direction?
Click to expand...

The market is so dicy and soft right now challenging anyone including KTM (who is not doing well themselves) is going to be hard. I don't think any manufacture is going to go all in at this point. I think BMW/Husky calculated, build the EZ stuff, rebadging is a double edged sward but probably the right choice at this time. It is going to keep them looking kinda fresh without spending the whole wade on building a few brand new bikes. BWM has the power to throw down, go all in, build a bunch of new Huskys and make a run at KTM but to do that when the market is soooo soft would be suicide. I think they are kinda stuck doing exactly what hey are doing and do feel it will work and be the best path even though us Husky loyals want something different and more Husky less BMW. Tim is right, we are in survival mode. The new TE650, while many scoff at it could be a boon for husky if it does in fact come to the US at 7K. Not the bike many of us want but there is a good market for that type of bike, it looks freaking awesome next to a DR650 (the competition for this bike) and they can bring it to market with little cost on an already semi proven platform. I think we will see this for a while.

As for the 449-511 it is still shrugging off the kin-hood to the BMW's failed version and BMW stigma many have. It is a good bike. Does every bike need to be a race success to win on the show room? Absolutely not. DRZ400 anyone? that thread at TT shows that not many have chose it as a race bike. The other thread I started "the owners have spoken" is pertty much 100% positive real customer reviews of people loving the bike. And if you read through it most the customers are the DRZ400 type crowd. Does this make it a bad bike, heck no. the DRZ sold like hot cakes and was a great bike for the use. I ride my 511 with new KTM's and new Bergs all the time with B and A level guys and do not feel out gunned at all. Like you I have ridden a ton of bikes and these 449-511's stack up just fine at the regular guy level. Also I do note a lack of, "this broke" and " my rod bearings went bad" etc. and other such issues some past Huskys have had with this platform. For an almost all new bike it seems pretty solid. The thing to remember is the pros might not be flocking to it but the pros are also a very small slice of the buying public. I totally agree with you that a grass roots effort to get some local fast guys doing well on them would open a lot of people eyes to the bike. It does not need to win SX but if is was seen at local races doing well it would really boost sales. Kris said that their research showed the grass roots level exposure is by far the best bang for the buck advertising wise.

It is an interesting situation all motorcycle manufactures are in right now. I too see all these Fantics, and Ossa's and Bimotoas, and... and scratch my head. Why now? This is critical time for companies to make the right decisions, some of those might seem stupid to us (like the TE650) but in the end might be what is needed to survive. Will be interesting to watch it unfold and see who made the right decisions. I think we sometimes forget as we are the consumer and not the manufacturer that they have to make a profit and it is a business. Decisions are made by what will be profitable and not what cool new bike they can drop on is next and hope it works out financially.

This is quite the poker game to watch.
 
Europe is teetering on the brink right now - no-one can predict what will happen over the next twelve months. It's "squeeky bum time" over here, for sure. That said, the Euro manufacturers are running rings around the Japanese in terms of innovation, even though times are tough. Fingers crossed that it all works out.
 
GasGas showed a profit and sales were up 20% according to a related article. I do agree that the euro bikes have been improving at a better rate than the Jap bikes; unless you are looking for 4-stroke MX bikes. Even with them the KTM's can compete.
 
Mika Ahola has just announced his retirement. I will get story up later today. He had just said that he was signing with JTG for 2012. Makes me even more skeptical about the Jotogas project.
 
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