He couldn’t save his fictional club brother Opie who was killed in season 5, but Bobby Munson (Mark Boone Jr.) tells the Hollywood Reporter that the hit cable show Sons of Anarchy “basically saved Harley-Davidson.” Read it here.
Whoa there Bobby…that’s pretty big talk from a fictional patch holder.
It’s true that 7 years ago when the show first started, the motorcycle industry was just starting to swirl around the economic toilet drain, and several high profile manufacturers flushed themselves out, but to claim that a television show “saved” a major motorcycle manufacturer from bankruptcy is…well…bullshit.
If the Hollywood Reporter has their facts straight, Harley-Davidson is selling more bikes today than a few years ago and is leading the 18-34 market. And, while 2012 overall sales increased 6 percent, if you believe that’s what saved the Bar and Shield, then I’ve got oceanfront property in Nebraska that I’ll sell you at $500 an acre.
What saved Harley-Davidson was draconian cuts in operating costs, new deals with it’s union, expansion of overseas markets and a recovering US economy that had nothing to do with the show being popular, any more than Then Came Bronson kept Harley-Davidson alive back in the 70’s.
I’ll bet the cut on my back on that.
The post Fictional Bikers Say They Saved Harley-Davidson appeared first on USRiderNews.