[Goldsborough]

Exactly. H-Ds are not my cup-o-tea, but were I shopping in that market niche, I would not buy a foreign imitator. It'd be like buying a Chinese made Bowie knife.

The Japanese make brilliant sport and dirt bikes. The euros make excellent sport bikes and adventure/touring bikes. The euros also have decent retro bikes still being made like the Triumph Bonneville and the entire Moto Guzzi line. H-D makes the classic American style Iron Horse.

Imagine the Japanese making an ersatz Ducati. That'd be laughed at on at least two continents rather than just one. Cross cultural design cribbing never really works except upon those who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

It takes a special type of social apathy to shamelessly ride a cheaper fake.

I don't have any wannabe pangs on my BMW R1150GS, only a mild hunger for a newer 1200.

[Melas]

The Japanese make brilliant sport and dirt bikes.

IMHO, where the Japanese went wrong was trying to hard to imitate Harley Davidson. The Japanese had some wonderful inline twins, inline 4's, and some really hot V4's that were just dynamos on wheels. Today, it only seems like Japanese bikes are innovative when it comes to big touring machines and sport bikes. The cruisers are all v-twins to more closely resemble a Harley. Yamaha even went so far has to start using push rods, despite Yamaha having no nostalgic reason to build a cruiser with pushrods. As for Harley's being slow, who cares? They're fast enough. I feel about as badly when faster bike passes me on my Harley as I do when a vette blows by my jeep Cherokee. If you're exceeding the speed limit, you'll be passing me, even if you're on a moped, because your chances of catching me speeding are about nil. That's not what I look for in a car, and it's not what I look for in a motorcycle.

[MarkL]

Imagine the Japanese making an ersatz Ducati. That'd be laughed at on at least two continents rather than just one. Cross cultural design cribbing never really works except upon those who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

They tried...

Honday VTR-1000 (US) / RC-51 (rest of the world)

Suzuki TL1000R

Didn't work out so well for them. Both Honda and Suzuki built V-Twins for racing, but neither really did very well against the Ducatis, so they went back to their 4s (inline for Suzuki, and V4 for Honda).

Mark

[R. Scott]

Good points.
I haven’t been into dirt bikes since the early 70s, and never thought much of cafe racer crotch rockets. I preferred comfortable touring bikes. BMW makes a great touring bike.
When it comes to reliability, I often think of police department motorcycles. A long time ago California Highway Patrol switched to Kawasaki - remember “CHiPs? They had to switch back to Harley because the Kawasakis didn’t hold up. Our local department did the same thing - but again they didn’t old up. They were replaced with Harley and BMW, still running strong. They even have a few old shovelheads still on the rode.