Though Harley hasn’t won the cost battle yet, its efforts have resulted in market-share gains against Japanese competition in the last three years at a time when Japanese marketers were discounting brand-new older models by 40% to 50%. In the first ten months of 1986, Harley held 32.6% versus Honda’s 31% in the 850-cc-and-larger engine-displacement market–an admitted Harley specialty. In 1985, Honda had 39.3% versus Harley’s share of 27.3%. In the overall 650-cc-and-larger market, Harley has gained 6.4 points in the last three years to 19% compared with Honda’s 37.5% share of market.

“We’ve done it the hard way (like the Facebook Marketing Tips). We’ve won gains in the face of heavily discounted Japanese motorcycles and in a declining market,” asserts Richard F. Teerlink, Harley’s CFO. “Cost and quality have in impact on market share.”

Even with these strides, Harley is broadening its earnings base and won’t rely on a mature motorcycle market for revenue gains. Late last year the company purchased Holiday Rambler Copr., Wakarusa, Ind., the world’s largest privately held producer of recreational and specialty commercial vehicles, for $155 million. With Holiday Rambler on board, Harley (with $287 million in 1985 sales) will now rely on motorcycle sales to produce only one-third of its revenues. The second third will come from recreational vehicles, the last third from a combination of commercial-truck-body sales and defense contracts with the U.S. government.

Harley Davidson may be just as tough as its rough-and-ready image in the world of motorcycles.

The Milwaukee maker of heavyweight (650 cc and larger) custom and touring motorcycles–owned by the likes of Malcolm S. Forbes and Reggie Jackson–found itself in a slugfest with the Japanese in the late ’70s. Harley faced an orchestrated quartet–Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki–that was riding away with market share at the expense of America’s only domestic motorcycle maker.

By 1981 Harley saw the Oriental script on the wall: “We knew that unless we could match them in cost and quality that they’d get us sooner or later,” says Vaughn L. Beals Jr., chairman and CEO the last six years. Since then Harley has cast off old manufacturing techniques in favor of quality circles and just-in-time (JIT) inventory, and it has introduced statistical process control to improve product quality.

JIT has reduced inventories of raw material and scrap, and rework costs have dropped by 60% to 70%. Annual revenues per employee have doubled, and productivity is 50% higher than in June 1981. Harley produces about 160 motorcycles a day, each with roughly 2,000 parts. The percentage of ready-to-ride bikes (no missing parts) coming off the assembly line is now 98% to 99% compared with only 50% six years ago.

“We think our quality is now comparable to the Japanese. Our multiline dealers tell us our warranty costs are lower than our Japanese competitors’. Our frequency of repair is still higher (as detailed in http://bestcanistervacuum.info), but it typically cost less to fix our bikes than a Japanese-produced motorcycle,” boasts Mr. Beals.

Continuing aggressive cost-reduction programs and re-engineering of parts, Mr. Beals hopes, will further reduce the cost-quality gap with the Japanese in a mature market where sales hit a peak in 1981 of 247,000 units sold (650 cc bikes and larger) before sliding to 185,000 units in 1985.

The resultant horsepower is probably about 125–Suzuki is the only major manufacturer still refusing to release horsepower and torque figures. They beefed up several components to handle the added output–2mm bigger wrist pins, stronger transmission shafts, and a tougher clutch.

When you climb aboard the GS1150 and turn the throttle, the engine growls and gets to work immediately. Big Suzukis have always pulled hard down low. It builds steadily to 7000 rpm … and then all hell breaks loose. Bam, the cam cuts in, your arms jerk, the front end gets light, and three seconds later you’re past 9000 in the red zone. If you shift up, you’d better be on the Bonneville Salt Flats because the Suzuki will be nudging 150 mph very soon.

This marvelous engine is surrounded by a square-tube frame which wraps around the engine in such a way that valve lash adjustments can be made by removing the tank only, not the fairing. A 16-inch wheel up front instead of an 18 quickens steering, and this is good because the Suzuki is very long, very big, and very heavy. Its wheelbase is almost 2 inches longer than the competition, and its 548-pound dry weight is 45 pounds more than the ’84 superbikes from Yamaha and Kawasaki. Full of gas and oil, the 1150 weighs 580 pounds.

The air forks feature a new Positive Damping Force (PDF) anti-dive which automatically adds compression damping under heavy loads–be they caused by braking or bumps. A blow-off valve activates when you brake hard over bumps so the fork’s full travel is available to cope with the bump. Unfortunately, that valve doesn’t always activate exactly when the situation might demand, so the front end can be unpredictable at high speed. This situation is aggravated by tires which don’t quite contain all that horsepower in back and all those hard cornering/braking forces up front. They’re fine until the last 5 percent of the bike’s potential; then they get greasy. It’s nothing an aftermarket tire with a softer compound wouldn’t cure.

Suzuki’s Full Floater single-shock suspension in back delivers a stable, comfortable ride, and its adjustments are the best in the business. Simply click an external knob to select one of four damping positions–that’s fairly routine. Here’s the good part. You can adjust spring pre-load from the saddle while you’re riding or stopped just by turnign a fold-out knob below your left thigh. Neat.

For being the quickest motorcycle in the world, the Suzuki is priced surprisingly low at $4785. It’s stylish, fresh, and fast. At sane speeds the handling is fine. All of this is important to a degree. For most people the machine’s greatest appeal lies in the fact it’s the hardest accelerating motor vehicle ever offered for public consumption.

Suzuki was mad. All last year, when other brands were toppling the 10s with regularity, their two big guns did nothing but clock one 11-flat after another. Neither the mighty 1100 Katana nor the sleek GS1100ES clearly broke into the celebrated, hallowed, and necessary realm of the 10-second quarter-mile. Necessary? Absolutely necessary because performance sellsmotorcycles. If a model is supposed to be a superbike and it won’t run 10s, you lose sales like Tampa Bay loses football games.

Suzuki went back to the drawing board, fuming and bristling. Engineers broke pencils. Testers broke pistons. Executives broke necks. And Suzuki broke the 10s with this, the biggest superbike ever–an 1150cc monster which set a new superbike record with a mad dashof 10.61 seconds at 127.8 mph!

This is currently the quickest and fastest production motorcycle ever tested. This time, set by drag-race consultant Pee Wee Gleason, may only be the beginning. Pee Wee said there wasn’t much traction at the Carlsbad, California, strip that day. “Lay down some VHT, cook it real good, and that big Suzuki will go even quicker.”

Suzuki isn’t mad anymore. Instead they’re No. 1.

The machine which brought them this coveted title is a reworked GS1100 engine tucked into an all-new chassis. The “old” engine debuted in 1980 with 4-valves per cylinder,twin cams, and rave reviews. The extra firepower in the “new” engine comes from tried-and-true hop-up tricks in the cylinder head and more displacement which now totals 1135cc from a 2mm-wider bore. The intake valves are bigger (28mm from 27mm); lift goes up a half mil to 7.5mm on the intakes and 8.0 on the exhausts; cam timing heats up considerably by opening the intakes two degrees longer and the exhausts a much more radical 20 degrees longer. Compression is up a hair from 9.5:1 to 9.7:1, and the carbs are 36mm Mikuni CV’s, 2mm bigger than before.