A Talk With Willie G.
A Talk with Willie G.
Q&A
The man who designed the original Super Glide and the editor who tested it meet again in Milwaukee
Willie G: I still remember your test on the first Super Glide, back in 1970. That was really a special time, a unique time in history. I guess I didn't realize how unique it was. Your road test predicted the Super Glide would be a major piece of our history and our future. Maybe it wasn't the commercial success that I had hoped, because the boattail was pretty extreme for that timing, but it was the seed that started our whole lineup of custom bikes, so I'm very proud of it. At that time we had our big touring bikes and we had the Sportsters, but we didn't have anything that spoke to this custom idea, which has exploded. So that was the beginning.
Cook: Looking back, you’re telling me you think the boattail was a little too much?
Willie G: I think so. It was an attempt to give the back of the bike a kind of a streamlined form, something distinctive. I was looking for what I like to call “The Hook,” an area of design that will give us some form of street identity. I have to admit that in those years I had a lot of freedom to play with some of these things. There wasn’t a lot of research done; it was kind of pure-just try it, and let the market sort it out. We don’t do a lot of those things today because of the size of our company and the level of pre-planning that’s called for. We’re a Fortune 500 company now, I’m proud to say, and we have methods of doing in-depth study on our products that weren’t possible back in the early Seventies.
I am pleased to tell you, though, that the first Super Glide has become highly collectible.
Cook: Speaking of which, Harley does a fair number of limitededition commemorative models. But a 35th-anniversary Super Glide? Thirty-five seems to be a peculiar number to pick.
Willie G: It is an oddball year, I’ll agree with that. But we’ve just kicked off a new Dyna line with bigger forks, wider rear tire, a six-speed and a lot of other nice modifications, so now seemed the right time to go ahead with it. It also seemed like the right time to do something in red, white and blue. So we cranked it up and did it.
Cook: I know you’ve been asked this a million times, but I have to ask you again. H-D’s connection with AMF went sour for a number of reasons. A group of you guys said,
“Let’s buy it back.” After you pulled that off, did you think, in the cold light of early morning, “What in the world have I done?”
Willie G: We all did. There were a lot of questions coming from our advisors and our finance people that suggested a number of them thought we were nuts. As a motorcycle manufacturer, we weren’t exactly setting the world on fire. Our competition was strong; there were a lot of competitive motorcycles available at that time for a very reasonable price; and we had quality humps to get over.
But for me, it was probably more of an emotional decision than anything else. I went to my family, talked to my kids and my wife and said, look, here’s what’s on the table. I said I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but here was an opportunity to save this famous brand, and there was no way I was going to walk away from that.
Cook: When did you know that this was going to work? Willie G: We started to see light at the end of the tunnel in 1985,
1986. A serious tipping point had come in 1984, when Citicorp decided they didn’t want us in their portfolio. But we scrambled around the financial world and found somebody who was willing to help us keep the doors open. That was a touch-and-go situation-we were extremely close to bankruptcy; we were in a serious bind.
Cook: But that’s what makes this such a great story-the “Milwaukee Miracle.”
So many other big American manufacturing companies have given up in the face of cheap foreign labor and a million other factors. What tugs at my personal heartstrings is the notion that Harley-Davidson has faced more severe competition in its field than any other company in any other field, and Harley has thrived. I understand you have around 9000 employees now. I see this amazing new design facility, I see all these motorcycles in full parking lots, and I remember some of my visits to the old Juneau Avenue plant, which wasn’t that far removed back in the Sixties from having dirt floors. And here you are today.
Willie G: Another major turning point, besides our quality upgrade, was the Evolution engine, which was at the beginning of our resurgence. And being part of the (motorcycle) culture was critical, too. All my design team members are avid riders. We’re artists, but with a little gasoline running in our veins.
The emotional part of this business I think is really critical to our success. A motorcycle obviously has to function properly, but it has to ring your chimes, too. It has to, as an art form, excite you when you look at it; that involves pro-
portions, shapes and colors. We try to understand that. There’s a certain balance between art and science that goes into this whole thing.
Cook: And Harley-Davidson historically has understood, more profoundly than any other manufacturer that it’s not just about the bike and how it functions.
Willie G: I’ve always believed that being a rider and being involved in riding activities has been critical to our success. In 1983 we started our Harley Owners Group. People who have similar interests always tend to gather-motorcycle people were gathering as early as the 1900s. The H.O.G. organization today has
close to a million members worldwide. Matter of fact, I just got back from a 1500-mile ride all through Michigan and Wisconsin with a terrific bunch of folks, and it’s those kinds of relationships we’re talking about here. We had to have that nucleus working for us, which is really more than the machine.
People ask me constantly about the Harley-Davidson mystique.
I tell them in my very first sentence that it’s hard to describe, because it is a feeling. But I tell them that it’s very much like a diamond. A diamond has a lot of facets, and our mystique is like that-it’s the relationships, the ride, the product, the people you meet, the dealers, the great roads in this country you can experience. It’s about all of it. All of it. G
