Victory Vision

Arlen might be a mess, but he's a rich mess. Besides, he owns a Triumph franchise. That's 250K for the floorplan, acessories and training. Pretty steep for a niche bike.

Not on this thread but I heard that Triumph wants exclusive dealers and that would be good except for one thing. Like Polaris/Victory, Triumph has a ways to go to become mainstream like they were in the early 60's. The playing field is appreciably different now.

If I had 250K floating around or whatever Polaris/Victory requires too franchise, I'd go with them before Triumph, simply because with Polaris, you get summer sales and winter sales....Bikes in the warm months and a really well respected snowmobile in the winter. As it is, I barely have enough money to go to Rally's. Anyone want to spring for a Big Buford?

Most rich people are a mess.

Press Disservice

Out of the blue, in July of 1998, Cycle World selected the one-month old Polaris Victory V92C as the "touring bike of the year". Even the Polaris name, as a bike producer, was less than one-year old at the time.

Which caused the mag's readership to rebel. In the Sep. issue, under a "Ten Best Backfires" (sic) heading, CW published letters (including one from truly yours Jamie!) expressing perplexity, if not consternation. As one of the other, selected "Ten Best" objectors wisely wrote: "I suspect 99% of your readers have never seen, much less ridden, the Polaris. Yet, curiously, your magazine decided it's the best on the market".

And now, 9 years later, out of the blue, Motorcyclist, Sep. 2007 issue, rates the [Polaris] Victory Vision Street, "best cruiser of 2007", based on a press preview ride.

This sort of hasty praise by CW admittedly did more harm than good to Polaris Victory back in the late 90's.

Am afraid that Motorcyclist's equally premature exultation will ... backfire.

Jamie

I use to subscribe to a pile of bike and snowmobile rags and when you compare tham all for a given month, you only need to subscribe to one. They all say the same thing in different words and they all have the same ads. Most of them have more ads than content anyway. I only get the AMA mag now and even that has a fair amount of hucksterism.

Actually, the easiest way to read all the rags is to go with your wife to the grocery store and stand there and read 'em while she shops. That's the cheap way and probably the best way too.