WHAT IS THE REASON OF HARLEY DAVIDSON GOING THROUGH ROUGH YEARS IN 80'S?

AMF was known for its leaking engines, unreliable performance, and poor customer service.
Taken together, AMF’s heavy handed management style, labor hostility and the Milwaukee strike, all contributed to the decline in the quality of Harley Davidson motorcycles.

WHILE HD DEALING WITH DIFFICULTIES, WHAT KIND OF CHANGES CONTINUED IN THE INDUSTRY?

While Harley bikes experienced growing quality problems, Japanese bike manufacturers were steadily expanding their reach into the high end motorcycle market. As a result, Harley was selling more motorcycles than ever before, but at the same time, it was losing market share to better quality and less expensive Japanese machines; between 1973 and 1981, Harley’s share in the super heavy segment of industry, the company’s strongest market dropped from 78 % to 30 % and a year later, its share in the heavy segment fell below Honda’s , 30 % against 34%. It was at this point that AMF management decided to put its troubled Harley Davidson up for sale.

1982-83 and 1984 were rough years because Japanese manufacturers like Kawasaki, Suzuki and Honda began selling in the US in increasing numbers and were able to build bigger bikes at lower costs. And this began to tell on Harley-Davidson's balance sheet. The company’s market share in the United States had fallen to 3 percent, primarily because its products were unreliable and had poorer performance relative to less expensive Japanese motorcycles.

WHAT WAS THE STRATEGIC ACTION OF HD AGAINST THIS RIVALRY?

Updated manufacturing methods, improved quality, and expanded the model line.

Harley-Davidson was reincorporated in 1981 after it was purchased by 13 of its managers through a leveraged buyout (LBO). The management team’s main focus at the time was to preserve jobs, but managers soon realized