http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/06/05/afx5083163.html
Looks like MV Augusta is their next target.
Most of the people I see with exotic bikes are the same type of people that own a H-D already ... High net worth individuals that want shiny toys. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but ...
Adam
I like MVs and dislike almost all Harleys, but I guess business is business
This, too, shall pass.
Phew!!....That means they are off Ducati's tail anyways. I guess that means I can cancel the leather fringe tassels I had ordered for my handlebar grips ;D
Quote from: ato memphis on June 06, 2008, 08:40:18 AM
This, too, shall pass.
Yes. Hopefully for another beautiful Italian exotic it will.
Sad as it is, MV Augusta is running out of options, AMCN has reported there are a number of companies looking at MV Augusta at the Moment because they are in such Financial trouble, They have quite a lot of Debt, They have just shut production down because they have no money to pay workers or suppliers, and they have no money to develop new models, The biggest buyer at the moment is not HD but an Indian Company TATA, They have Money to burn, And with the money TATA has to play with they could outbid HD without raising a sweat. I mean they just bought Jaguar and Land Rover off Ford!
If you want to see how big TATA is, Check out the Website www.tata.com
They are a massive company with very good profits and would probably suit MV Augusta well, considering TATA started out as a car company so they know how fickle the Automotive market can be, and I'm sure I read somewhere that the MD and CEO are both Motorcycling fans with quite an Impressive collection of bike between them.
This could get interesting.
Quote from: CairnsDuc on June 06, 2008, 01:31:19 PM
They have just shut production down because they have no money to pay workers or suppliers, and they have no money to develop new models
Wow, I had no idea.
Haven't riddena n MV, but Damn! they're purty [thumbsup]
But seriously, HD? Just ain't right :P
i can see it now................harley announces the mv skinny boy [bang]
Man... i'm so glad Ducati ducked, no pun intended, the HD bullet. I don't know how I would have been able to sleep at night. Just the thought of a HD ownership makes my stomach turn. [puke]
All the best to MV and May The Force Be With Them to fight a HD take over.
I had my M900 and MH900e parked in front of my garage last year while doing some cleaning. Neighbor with HD Skirt-ser, i mean..,. Sportser came up. He looked at them with his nose up and said... "Not enough chrome and lacks soul... the only real bikes are HD blah blah... blah". Honest to god. His exact words. What an ignorant fool. I know it is wrong of me to feel [puke] about HD... but comments like that makes me hate HD even more.
IMHO I'd rather have the company owned by Harley than a Chinese company like Benelli is.
I bet Eric Buell's butt cheeks are puckered. He might become Hell's Angels redheaded-stepchild. Or on the other end. MV Agusta may become the next Hummer (aka, Silverado with a facelift).
TATA doesn't sound too bad. It's alot better than HD or some asian company.
Quote from: Ohmic on June 06, 2008, 04:28:47 PM
I had my M900 and MH900e parked in front of my garage last year while doing some cleaning. Neighbor with HD Skirt-ser, i mean..,. Sportser came up. He looked at them with his nose up and said... "Not enough chrome and lacks soul... the only real bikes are HD blah blah... blah". Honest to god. His exact words. What an ignorant fool. I know it is wrong of me to feel [puke] about HD... but comments like that makes me hate HD even more.
Enthusiasm is one thing, but he's slipped well into delusional. ???
Quote from: DrDesmosedici on June 06, 2008, 06:52:56 AM
Most of the people I see with exotic bikes are the same type of people that own a H-D already ... High net worth individuals that want shiny toys. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but ...
Adam
many consider Ducati an exotic
Quote from: Mac_48 on June 06, 2008, 04:58:40 PM
TATA doesn't sound too bad. It's alot better than HD or some asian company.
Well, TATA is an Indian company, so it will make it Asian as well!! ;D
Quote from: Monstruo on June 07, 2008, 08:40:07 AM
Well, TATA is an Indian company, so it will make it Asian as well!! ;D
lol You beat me to it. ;)
Let's just hope that the new owners, if TATA were to pick up MV, don't decide that they should start making some of the Enfield replicas that are so common there in their region.
Quote from: Ohmic on June 06, 2008, 04:28:47 PM
Man... i'm so glad Ducati ducked, no pun intended, the HD bullet. I don't know how I would have been able to sleep at night. Just the thought of a HD ownership makes my stomach turn. [puke]
All the best to MV and May The Force Be With Them to fight a HD take over.
I had my M900 and MH900e parked in front of my garage last year while doing some cleaning. Neighbor with HD Skirt-ser, i mean..,. Sportser came up. He looked at them with his nose up and said... "Not enough carbon fiber and lacks soul... the only real bikes are Ducatis blah blah... blah". Honest to god. His exact words. What an ignorant fool. I know it is wrong of me to feel [puke] about Ducati... but comments like that makes me hate Ducati even more.
Fixed it for ya. [laugh]
I know what you mean about the HD
attitude, but the same could be said about Ducatisti as well. 8)
I think that MV Augusta would do well to get out from under it's debt load, when was the last time you saw a new model from them? I mean a really new model, not just an upgrade like the F4 312?
Quote from: CairnsDuc on June 06, 2008, 01:31:19 PM
Sad as it is, MV Augusta is running out of options, AMCN has reported there are a number of companies looking at MV Augusta at the Moment because they are in such Financial trouble, They have quite a lot of Debt, They have just shut production down because they have no money to pay workers or suppliers, and they have no money to develop new models, The biggest buyer at the moment is not HD but an Indian Company TATA, They have Money to burn, And with the money TATA has to play with they could outbid HD without raising a sweat. I mean they just bought Jaguar and Land Rover off Ford!
If you want to see how big TATA is, Check out the Website www.tata.com
They are a massive company with very good profits and would probably suit MV Augusta well, considering TATA started out as a car company so they know how fickle the Automotive market can be, and I'm sure I read somewhere that the MD and CEO are both Motorcycling fans with quite an Impressive collection of bike between them.
This could get interesting.
TATA is also the company that just purchased Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford.
Reread my post Heathbert, End of the first Paragraph... ;)
Quote from: CairnsDuc on June 07, 2008, 02:12:54 PM
Reread my post Heathbert, End of the first Paragraph... ;)
Oops...I guess I shouldn't be working and posting at the same time, that's what I get for multi-tasking. :P
"He looked at them with his nose up and said... "Not enough chrome and lacks soul... the only real bikes are HD blah blah... blah". Honest to god. His exact words. What an ignorant fool. I know it is wrong of me to feel about HD... but comments like that makes me hate HD even more."
Not all H-D owners are like that. Take me for example. I hate chrome and my Monster has more sole than I know what to do with! [moto]
every make has f'tard owners. blow it off
Quote from: Ohmic on June 06, 2008, 04:28:47 PM
Man... i'm so glad Ducati ducked, no pun intended, the HD bullet. I don't know how I would have been able to sleep at night. Just the thought of a HD ownership makes my stomach turn. [puke]
All the best to MV and May The Force Be With Them to fight a HD take over.
I had my M900 and MH900e parked in front of my garage last year while doing some cleaning. Neighbor with HD Skirt-ser, i mean..,. Sportser came up. He looked at them with his nose up and said... "Not enough chrome and lacks soul... the only real bikes are HD blah blah... blah". Honest to god. His exact words. What an ignorant fool. I know it is wrong of me to feel [puke] about HD... but comments like that makes me hate HD even more.
Have comfort in the thought that HD doesn't consider the Sportster as a "real" Harley. As a friend that runs a Harley dealership said, "We can sell all the Sportsters they build and it doesn't matter. We are judged by how many 'real' Harley's we sell."
BTW, not hating on Harley, just on ignorant fools ;)
Quote from: Heathbert on June 08, 2008, 08:29:38 AM
Have comfort in the thought that HD doesn't consider the Sportster as a "real" Harley. As a friend that runs a Harley dealership said, "We can sell all the Sportsters they build and it doesn't matter. We are judged by how many 'real' Harley's we sell."
BTW, not hating on Harley, just on ignorant fools ;)
So basically, the dealer is saying that the Sporty is the Ducati Monster 620 of its line-up. IE, the bread and butter low margin high volume item. What really matters to their bottom line is how much high margin product they move. I bet you'd hear a Ducati dealer say almost the same thing. What matters really to Ducati is how many SBK's they sell.
I'd like to see Harley not do the MV thing, not for the sake of MV, but for the sake of Harley. They should stick with what they know. That's how they managed to be around as long as they have.
Quote from: Mika on June 07, 2008, 10:18:47 PM
every make has f'tard owners. blow it off
LOL! So true. "f'tard" What a great word/spelling. May I use it? [clap]
"I'd like to see Harley not do the MV thing, not for the sake of MV, but for the sake of Harley. They should stick with what they know. That's how they managed to be around as long as they have."
IMO, Harley needs to do something like this *succsessfully* to stick around in the future. There is only so much technology available to carry the water of the low tech 45 deg. air cooled V-Twin. And only so many wanna-PLAY-biker baby boomers to keep the sales margin where it's at. Harley had an unprecidented run of corp. profits for about 25 years. That's unprecidented in corporations, not just cycle mfg's. Last year they saw their first decline in the lifetime of some of our younger members. H-D also cut back production for the first time since they pulled out the stops about 20 years ago.
Good news for H-D's long term: the company is run by motorcyclists who know how to fix a problem (make a terrible design functional & dependable if not powerful), and they know how to market like nobody's business. And they've supported/partially owned Buell. Say what you will about Eric Buell, but he's all about NOT sacrificing function for style.
If H-D wants MV, I suspect it is because they recognize that MV represents a market they need to be in in the future, heck, right now even.
These types of aquisitions live or die based upon how the two corporate cultures merge/get along. More room for optimism there: H-D has plenty of experience with our Tuetonic breteren. They have years of experience working (sucessfully) with Porsche, and more recently through Buell with Rotax. If they can carry that international collaborative success over to the Italian culture then they will be fine. They may screw the pooch with Italians, time will tell. But H-D at least "gets" working on the continent.
Harley must change or die. I don't worry for MV. But Harley is a different story.
Please forgive any misspellings or typos. Still [coffee] and can't find the dern speelchacker.
If HD buys MV, does that mean we will see the Mito 500 with a Buell Blast engine this time?
[puke]
I might also point out that Cagiva (NKA MV Agusta) used to own Aermacchi, which made the Harley Davidsons in Europe.
What goes around comes around.
Quote from: Mika on June 07, 2008, 10:18:47 PM
every make has f'tard owners. blow it off
I blow it off alright. Every time I warm one of the Ducs for riding I point the exhausts towards his front window [evil]
Back to the topic:
I think that small companies like Ducati/MV should be left alone and allowed to create and do what they do without pressure from above(parent company). If MV is in trouble it should merge with Ducati.
Quote from: Ohmic on June 08, 2008, 12:18:38 PM
I think that small companies like Ducati/MV should be left alone and allowed to create and do what they do without pressure from above(parent company). If MV is in trouble it should merge with Ducati.
Then they'd just get pressure from somewhere else....
Quote from: NorDog on June 07, 2008, 06:25:45 PM
Take me for example. I hate chrome and my Monster has more sole than I know what to do with! [moto]
Have you tried baking it? Baked sole is delicious.
Quote from: someguy on June 08, 2008, 12:46:00 PM
Then they'd just get pressure from somewhere else....
Yeah, what they need is a deep pockets sponsor that let's them do what they do best. Seems to work for Buell. Again, I know many here don't like Buells, but they certainly aren't H-D clones. Eric Buell has been allowed to do his thing his way it seems. So, perhaps MV will too if this deal goes down.
I see the possiblity as a win-win for H-D and MV.
I think Ducati is in a sweet spot right now in that they made a 13milliom plus Euro profit last year after a sketchy past as far as profitability. To take on a company with alot of debt would or could endanger Ducati's position to remain with enough cash to do the R&D to continue to be the leader of the Superbike racing pack which ultimately ends up in the showroom. Perhaps Ducati could lure away MV's Top people / designers which could mean great Ducati badged bikes with new perspectives that would be a big win for the Factory.
Quote from: DRKWNG on June 07, 2008, 10:22:39 AM
Let's just hope that the new owners, if TATA were to pick up MV, don't decide that they should start making some of the Enfield replicas that are so common there in their region.
I can just see Superbike UK reviewing the bike --- "I wish we could say this is a bodacious TATA...."
Quote from: DoubleEagle on June 08, 2008, 02:00:06 PM
Perhaps Ducati could lure away MV's Top people / designers which could mean great Ducati badged bikes with new perspectives that would be a big win for the Factory.
They're already winning big.
Integrating another product line full of debt and fairly similar in style and the market they're after wouldn't really help them much.