company changed its focus from its product to the financial performance of the company, and the quality of the bikes suffered as a result. By attempting to increase quantity too quickly, quality was sacrificed. A leveraged buyout was instigated in 1981 by executives of the company; once successful, the new company petitioned, and received, stiff trade tariffs to the foreign competition. Five years later, the company petitioned the International Trade Commission to lift the protective tariffs prior to their expiration date: the company had used the time to regain a healthy 50 percent domestic market share. In addition to demonstrating the new quality that Harley thought it had in its product line at the time, the move also helped the company gain entrance to the New York Stock Exchange.
The heart of the company's product line is its super heavyweight motorcycle. Motorcycles are based on five chassis designs and are powered by one of three air-cooled, win cylinder "V" configurations with displacements of 883cc, 1200cc, and 1340cc. Harley has encountered little recent new entries in this super-heavyweight class from the Japanese. After intense competition during the early 1980s, few innovations have been seen by the Japanese in the cruiser class since the late 1980s. This lack of innovation helped secure Harley-Davidson's place as the premier provider of cruiser bikes.
During the 1980s, Japanese manufacturers used American design teams in order to design bikes that had an "American" look and feel about them. The result were bikes that imitated the newly successful Harley cruisers (Van Hooydonk, 1991, p. 37). By the end of the 1980s, all large Japanese cruisers were configured in the twin "V" that had become Harley-Davidson's signature. Suzuki had strong success with the Intruder, and Kawasaki introduced the Vulcan 700 in 1985 and the huge vulcan 1500 in 1987. The 1500 was remarkable in its similarity to Harley styling, i...