Yankee Ingenuity

YANKEE INGENUITY

RACING INTO THE FUTURE

KEVIN CAMERON

OKAY, NOW EVEN skeptics have to accept it. The Harley-Davidson VR1000 Superbike is a force to be reckoned with in AMA roadracing. After more than 20 years away from the game, Harley has made a V-Twin machine that has qualified and finished ahead of bikes fielded

by the experienced Honda and Suzuki teams. The fresh truth is this: Good motorcycles can be designed and built anywhere there are thinking, intelligent people who want to do it and can afford it.

Don’t forget that high-tech was in some sense invented here. For too long, we Americans have been accustomed to see our best science and engineering go into high-dollar military applications, while nations on the sidelines of the Cold War used their best thought for commercial purposes. If we wanted the fruits of our own high technology at affordable prices, we had to buy them abroad-computers, VCRs, advanced machine tools.

Times are changing, and fast. Harley-Davidson has mastered modem manufacturing. By contrast, the Japanese producers are in trouble. All their manufacturing know-how is of slight avail against the unfavorable yen-dollar exchange, which prices their motorcycles almost out of reach of their traditional 16-to-24-year-old market. This will get worse before it gets better. Relations with Japan are, if anything, getting worse; the trade imbalance continues, and hard words are exchanged in trade talks.

Isn’t H-D tempted to pick up where the Japanese seem to be leaving off? An experimental VR streetbike was casually ridden to the Elkhart National, and there it was for all to see, lights, turnsignals, muffler and horn. And if they can design and build one high-perf bike, they can do others. The easy objection-that the VR is a race engine, too expensive for production-is invalidated by the fact that the U.S. is the originator of mass production.

“Oh, no,” you might say, “See, the offshore companies have Just-In-Time manufacturing, economies of scale, tooling-in-being.” Sorry, your buzzwords are obsolete. HarleyDavidson has mastered JIT, and its chrome and paint lines, and long rows of multi-axis CNC machining centers are ready to make whatever is wanted.

Consider an interesting parallel. For years, it's been assumed that we'd always have to buy our personal computers from the “Asian Tigers” because they can beat any price. But in a breathtaking reversal, it turns out that a more important factor in computers is instant market response. U.S. makers, embedded in the world’s biggest market, clearly offer the fastest new-product response, so they are taking back the business. Some parts of the motorcycle market operate the same way. Could new products plus Harley’s manufacturing skill take back a significant share of the sportbike market in the next five years? Could H-D, immune as it largely is to the yen/dollar exchange, even revive the “standard” as a motorcycle sales category?

And there’s another point. Harley is cash-rich now. Reportedly, 93,000 machines are to be built in 1995, and all are pre-sold. Production is set to exceed 100,000 the following year. Motorcycle manufacturing in the U.S. is a billiondollar business. The lesson of business history is clear: When there’s money, that’s the time to make changes-new tooling, new products, a new methodology. Can Harley succeed endlessly with its present traditional, nationalistic product? Are there opportunities outside that tradition?

Another idea that recent history has set aside is that the U.S. economy has become weak and irrelevant in a world dominated by new, stronger, more dynamic economies. According to that scenario, the wise course for U.S. industry is move its operations offshore or roll over and die. But Japan falters after its real-estate bubble burst and after continuing revelations of government corruption. Germany falters in trying to afford the cost of its reunification. The U.S., by contrast, looks to be a tower of strength, with at least some new jobs and strong indicators of economic growth. There is powerful new meaning in the phrase, “Do it in the USA.”

In thinking about the motorcycle business, abandon for the moment the traditional categories, like “Fastest 600class machine.” Set the abstraction of displacement aside and think instead about performance and looks per dollar spent. It’s cheaper to reach any given ratio of power to weight with cubic inches than with the cubic technology of more valves, cylinders and revs. Does the rider care which it

is? Should he/she? What if Harley-Davidson (or any likeminded U.S.-based producer) entered the sportbike market with a $6000 bike that had magnetic American style and outperformed offshore bikes priced at $8000, or $16,000?

Present H-D streetbike engines are expensive to build, using complex castings and roller bearings that owe more to tradition than to design for rapid manufacture and assembly. The VR, by contrast, is essentially a slice off of a modem, high-production car engine; it has plain-bearing con-rods set side-by-side on a single crankpin. It’s liquid-cooled, which solves potential problems with noise. Its crankcase and cylinders are cast in one piece. And, with four valves per cylinder and fuel injection, it combines high performance with good emissions-compliance capability. A productionized VR Replica could be economically built using automotive methods.

This country is full of talent, much of it now available at very competitive prices. Our “national laboratories”-for which read “ex-weapons labs”-like Los Alamos and Lawrence-Livermore are sending out glossy, four-color brochures describing how eager and able they are to beat nuclear swords into commercial plowshares, to solve special problems of American industry. Large numbers of talented scientists and engineers are looking for work, victims of “Gorbachev unemployment.” During the Cold War, our best

brains learned to produce elegant solutions regardless of price. Now the aim is shifting to elegant solutions—at a price. Lately we are finding out that it’s not that the Japanese are special, or Americans are special, or the Germans or Italians. It is simply that intelligent, energetic people, given a chance, can do anything.

The VR’s rapid development this season shows that being an American doesn’t somehow disqualify you from designing a roadracing motorcycle. The young VR development team is made up of people who grew up with ohmmeters in their pockets, computers on their desks and the attitude that things are what we make them. The VR is proof that Harley can, when it chooses, abandon tradition and do something completely fresh. What next?