Yahoo Autos Defeat, Snatched From the Jaws of Victory
Five months ago, around this time, I was milling around a parking lot in Stugis, South Dakota, checking out the Victory lineup and watching a pair of stunt riders using Victory "baggers" to perform a variety of spinning and sliding tricks. I was far from alone; there was a lot of interest in both the bikes and the show, hundreds of people cramming up against makeshift barriers to watch the tires smoke and giving a lot of generally approving attention to the new Octane cruiser.
If you'd told me that the Victory brand would barely survive the year before being closed for good, I'd have laughed at you. Yet although there were a lot of people looking at Victory bikes, very few of them had actually arrived at Sturgis behind the handlebars of any motorcycle from Polaris Industries. Those who had were far more likely to be riding an Indian, as I was at the time. In fact, a casual observer at Sturgis who didn't know anything about the two Polaris-owned brands might think that Indian was the twenty-year veteran on the scene and Victory was the recently-revived boutique brand, rather than the reverse.
You have to admire the decisiveness shown by Polaris here. Given the same situation-a futuristic, design-and-technology-oriented sub-brand in shambles-General Motors hemmed and hawed for quite a long time before closing Oldsmobile in a manner that managed to upset pretty much everybody from the customers to the dealers. Yet it's a shame, because the Victory bikes are both mechanically impressive and quite handsome. The Vision tourer is still the most modern-looking motorcycle for sale in America a full decade after its debut; the Magnum bagger is an absolute design tour de force.
The two-wheel market is gripped by a despicable bout of old-man-itis at the moment.
And that was the problem. The two-wheel market is gripped by a despicable bout of old-man-itis at the moment. Nobody wants a dazzling modern motorcycle any more. The blue-collar buyers demand touring bikes and baggers that look just like the ones their grandparents rode, while the relatively small number of upscale and/or over-educated types who haven't been frightened out of motorcycling entirely are obsessed with "adventure" bikes that trade speed and style for occasional off-road or long-haul capability.
In these market conditions, the Indian brand has legs and the Victory brand does not. It's an easy decision to make, I suppose. There's no real tragedy here. Polaris will be more profitable, the dealers will be happier. Most of the Victory owners out there will probably just switch over to Indian the next time they buy a new motorcycle; after all, the Indians are actually as modern as anything from Ducati or BMW under their retro dressing. The frame of a Chieftain or a Roadmaster is an endlessly CAD-iterated aluminum beam frame, just like the one in my ZX-14R.
Still, I'm not one of those people who cheers when a brand with genuine merit disappears from the scene, whether that brand is Oldsmobile, Victory, or Studebaker. I apologize for mentioning Olds a second time but I'm still a little sore at the idea that Oldsmobile had to die so Buick could live. At the time that the decision was made, the Rocket brand had a visually unified array of sleek, sharp-handling sedans and Buick showrooms looked like a dumping ground for rejected styling concepts. You can't tell me that the Regal was superior to the Intrigue, or that the LeSabre was worth considering over the Aurora. In the end, the decision came down to what the Chinese wanted. That's pathetic and it's depressing and I'm sorry I brought it up. Let's move on.
I also worry more than a little bit about the fact that the Victory brand couldn't succeed despite good products, aggressive pricing, and plenty of marketing support. It makes me think that branding in the 21st Century is going to be like California real estate in the 21st Century: the good spots will be ridiculously overbid and there won't be any room for new builds. It raises the barrier to entry for new car and motorcycle brands, which is bad.
I can tell you two unpleasant truths about the market.
Truth be told, we could really use some new car and motorcycle brands at the moment. After walking around the Detroit show, I can tell you two unpleasant truths about the market. The first one is kind of funny: automakers are now required to bow before the secular gods of Sustainability and Mobility at all times in the same insincere, unpleasant fashion that otherwise debauched European nobility used while paying lip service to Christianity in the Middle Ages. If Chrysler debuted a new Viper at Chicago this year and the new Viper got six miles per gallon and had optional seats made of polar bear fur with spotted owl steering-wheel trim the press conference would still open up with a ten-minute sermon about how Millennials really, really want fractional sustainable mobility ownership partnership relationships.
The second truth is just plain sad: we are facing a shortage of actual ideas out there in auto-land. The current Big Direction in new cars is ugly, bewildered-looking cubes with unnecessary ride height and it's been that way for fifteen miserable years now. There are only so many ways you can put frosting on these broccoli-flavored cakes and pretty much all of them have been tried multiple times. Nine of ten "new" designs on the market appear to be some sort of take on the previous-generation Toyota Highlander with additional black plastic behind the back windows. The tenth, of course, is a disinterested take on the vaguely-upscale sedan.
Just like the motorcycle business, the automotive business is in a profoundly conservative period at the moment. What's needed is some new blood, new ideas, new brands to shake things up. But who's going to take a risk on funding a new automotive brand? You'd be better off putting your venture capital into making Internet-connected toilet brushes or something like that. But here's the thing: the pendulum will eventually swing. It always does. And when that swing happens, the people who happen to be on the authentically-new side of the design spectrum are going to clean up. That applies to both cars and motorcycles. In the meantime, however, if you want a futuristic-looking American motorcycle, there will be some available at an impressive discount. Look for a place where they are taking the "Victory" sign down off the outside of the building. You won't be disappointed, I promise.
Born in Brooklyn but banished to Ohio, Jack Baruth has won races on four different kinds of bicycles and in seven different kinds of cars. Everything he writes should probably come with a trigger warning. His column, Avoidable Contact, runs twice a week.
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