The HD brand is tied to a demographic that is dying out [1]. It’s actually a great private equity play to squeeze out what’s left of the enterprise value as Boomers slowly age out of their market. HD tried to market an electric motorcycle ("Livewire") [2], but ended up having to spin it out into its own company because HD riders are buying the HD aesthetic, not the motorcycle itself, which is simply a vehicle for said aesthetic. Livewire for younger buyers, HD for old men buying the exhaust note of a copyrighted engine that is purposely louder but less efficient.

> To be fair, revenues and unit sales have enjoyed a nice bounce since the pits of the financial crisis. But Harley will never get its old mojo back for one critical reason that is completely outside of its control: demographics.

> Down the road from my house in Dallas, there is greasy drive-in burger joint called Keller’s … a place I’ve been known to frequent a little more often than my doctor might recommend. On any given weekend, you might see a dozen or more bikers parked in the lot, showing off their chrome-laden Harleys. And nearly all of them are over the age of 45. Most are over 50.

> This isn’t a coincidence. Harley-Davidson is a brand whose sales depend disproportionately -- almost exclusively, in fact -- on middle-aged Caucasian males. Riders younger than 40 generally lack the time, interest or the bankroll to buy a Harley. But by the time they get into their 60s or older, the noise and joint pain have begun to make riding lose its allure. You might still ride in your 60s, but you’re doing it less frequently and you probably aren’t buying a new bike.

> The sweet spot is the mid-40s to early 50s. And with the Baby Boomers -- the largest and wealthiest generation in history -- now largely aged out of this key demographic bracket, Harley has a serious problem. Generation X -- my generation -- is not nearly large enough to pick up the slack, and Generation Y (aka “the Millennials” or “Echo Boomers”) are decades away from being in the demographic sweet spot for Harley, and this assumes they take to riding like their dads did. The number of American men aged 40-49 is set to decline through the early 2020s and won’t reach its old 2010 peak until 2035.

> CNN Money reported on this as far back as 2010, and demographic strategist Harry Dent -- my old boss -- has used Harley as a case study for decades.

[1] Blame Harley-Davidson's Downfall On Baby Boomer Demographics - https://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2013/11/13/harley-... - November 13th, 2013

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveWire_(motorcycle)

(for context, ~2M people 55+ die every year in the US, and ~4M Boomers retire; by 2031, the US population over the age of 65 will be ~75M, almost double what it was in 2008)