• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

Sherco news from Clay Stuckey

Motosportz said:
ha ha ha yeah everything is Obamas fault. Getting pretty tired of that. Sad news on the bikes. Think how much better things would be if we didn't spend thousands of US lives, 100's of thousands of Middle east families lives and 6 trillion dollars on a war against those who did not attack us... all "off the books" which ended in a global collapse, wall street meltdown and Bush and Paulson standing there straight faced asking for 900 billion no stings attached to dig out as they walked out the door!!! Add in the bill for the vets and all the ongoing residual crap of those three wars from our cowboy and chief at the time and yep, were broke.
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Good answer , spot on. Making statements about the president in such a manner Clay will not act as a salve for your world view. Hello Gas Gas ; goodbye Sherco for me anyway .
 
Norman Foley said:
This a part of the reason, there are no longer Cagiva Huskys..... US is very price sensitive market and manufacturers, including KTM sell at lower prices.

Clay's initial success with GG, was based on the previous importer not being able to move bikes, because they were higher priced than KTM's. Clay bought them cheap and blew them out... everyone was in GG love fest mode. Then Clay had to start buying bikes from the factory at true cost and things slowly unraveled.

He knows US market won't absorb many $10,000+ dirt bikes and if he brings them in... they will sit until he blows them out at a loss. He rode up on the other guys loss, so he knows it too well.

There were times in W's tenure, that the Euro was $1.40 plus.
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Norm is correct,:)
 
PS all that and these Sherco bikes will be missed, I rode Chilly's test bike 300SEI-R (?) that thing was everything good the TXC310R had with a better refined feel, its a real winner bike, very refined and well engineered.. That French Racing Bleu is handsome as well.
 
Motosportz said:
ha ha ha yeah everything is Obamas fault. Getting pretty tired of that. Sad news on the bikes. Think how much better things would be if we didn't spend thousands of US lives, 100's of thousands of Middle east families lives and 6 trillion dollars on a war against those who did not attack us... all "off the books" which ended in a global collapse, wall street meltdown and Bush and Paulson standing there straight faced asking for 900 billion no stings attached to dig out as they walked out the door!!! Add in the bill for the vets and all the ongoing residual crap of those three wars from our cowboy and chief at the time and yep, were broke.
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You forgot about our successful "War on Drugs"
 
Too bad. Seemed like Sherco was going to be in the mix here in the US as the "exotics" are becoming more mainstay. Not sure about the pricing? KTM has traditionally been a bit more than the Sherco. Beta are beginning to make a step up and are selling well. Gasgas has taken off lately with several new dealers and a darn good bike at a similar price as the Sherco.


A quick search here in Oregon:
2014 Beta 300 $7999
2014 Gasgas 300 $8299
2014 Sherco 300 $7999
2014 KTM 300 $8299
2014 husky 300 $8549

Great time IMO as we the buyer have lots of really great options on great bikes.
 
I just don't get the approach here. Publicly blasting corporate over their pricing isn't likely to go over well. I would love to see Sherco succeed, both here in the US and globally. Having another option is always good for us little guys. Hopefully Shereco can find someone who can make it work.
 
I was just about to start a thread on whats up with sherco. This explains it. The shercos at my dealer are in discount and a 300 two stroke isnt snatched up already.
 
Blaming the president and the bike company at the same time does not sound very professional. I have kept close eye on the exchange rate for years, and it really has not varied that much for the last 5-6 years. The bikes seem to be very good but they were priced a little high, Stuckey had slashed prices and cut dealer margins to try and get a market share, which I think is risky on both counts. He also was offering to sell direct which hurts the dealers, although supposedly the proffit went back to the dealer.
I think someone else will import them, unless this is just a bluff to try and get Sherco to lower prices, and once again, does not seem to professional to do it publicly.
 
Anyone who thinks that the president (any president) is to blame for global economic shifts is nuts. We heard the same crap when W was in office, and we'll hear the same crap when it changes hands again soon. Grow up and man up.

Sad to see Sherco going this way. Wouldn't the exchange rate stuff also effect KTM sales and prices? Seems like a cop-out.
 
Going full Knighter , ending prolly the same as Knighter
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Yep. first Knighter gets the boot. Now no US bikes. Sounds like 2015 is going to be a quiet year for Sherco in the US
 
From all accounts, Clay is a hard working responsible man. I'm sure he feels frustrated, and if he reads this thread maybe even a little put off. He is trying to state his position to keep customers informed, but I think at times Clay may be his own worst enemy. I'm not sure posting the original comments he did in the Sherco forum serves any long term advantage. Sometimes saying too much is saying too much. If I was a Sherco manager in France, I wonder what my feelings would be reading his comments as the US distributor for them. And as a dealer, what would be my calculus in weighing the advantages of selling an exotic bike versus the unpleasant reality of intermittent supply and marginal profit margins trying to compete with a company like KTM (when I think for most buyers who don't want orange they would buy anything else, even if it was no better than the KTM they are trying to avoid). While it is probably true that selling $10K+ bikes in the US would go over like a lead balloon for most buyers, my impression of Sherco/Beta/TM buyers is that they WANT to be distinct, are proud of spending MORE for a quality product, and take PRIDE in having a unique motorcycle. All of those attributes do not come at a price point.

I hope Clay is successful, and finds great fortune in the future. To that end, I wish him well. And I keep praying the buying public is still afforded plenty of choices instead of primarily one brand, repackaged 20 times over.
 
ktm prices going up on average $1000 here in Aus for 15 due to exchange rate(apparently) so sounds like it affects everyone!
 
Rule #1 of pretty much any job you can possibly have is; Do not talk badly about your boss or employer while you are collecting a paycheck from said employer. David Knight repeatedly complained publicly about various things Sherco. The short list included; Not happy with the practice bike, Not happy with travel arrangements, Not happy with bike set up, Not happy that he was expected to do some of his own mechanical work... and this I witnessed on two televised races. I'm still undecided about Sherco but I'm for sure no longer a Knighter fan.
 
Thumperama said:
geez....ease up on the guy. If he wants to blame Obama, that's fine with me. I can't stand the socialist either.
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EZ scapegoat for everyone. I'd rather hear real facts. I think global warming is going to make more trails open longer each year. He should site that as a win. Like some said here keep these wild accusation to yourself and deal with the real numbers and the situation at hand. Always EZ to blame someone not involved.
 
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