What’s With The Harley Davidson Obsession?

I’ve always noticed a large number of Harley’s on the road in Southeastern Michigan, and have always wondered what’s with the Harley Davidson obsession. It seems every time I’m out and about, either in my car or on my Thruxton (Triumph plug), every bike I see out on the road is a Harley.

Don’t take this the wrong way, this is not a post about bashing Harley’s. While I don’t consider myself a huge Harley fan, I do absolutely love the V-Rod line.  I just don’t understand what the obsession is all about. It seems like 90% of the bikes on the road around me are Harley’s. With so many choices available, why is everyone buying a Harley?

Is It Really 90%

So today, my son and myself took a little road trip. We headed up to Central Michigan University to move my daughter into her dorm room. I thought it might be fun if we played a little game on the 4 hour round trip drive.

Since it seemed to me that 90% of the bikes I see on the road are Harley’s, I thought it would be fun to conduct an un-scientific test to see if that was really the case.

The Rules

The rules of the game were simple. We would keep a running tally of each bike we saw on the road, and track how many of those bikes were Harley’s. We had to have a visible confirmation that it was a Harley, we couldn’t just assume it was.

It wasn’t the greatest day for riding, since it was raining on and off throughout the day, but we did see close to 100 bikes. We actually saw many more, but we threw them out of our result totals as we weren’t able to confirm the manufacturer.

The Results

What were the results of our little test? Well we were able to confirm the make of 75 bikes, of which 64 were Harley’s. That’s means over 85% of the bikes we saw on the road today were Harley’s.

I was shocked. I was pretty darn close to my assumption that 90% of the bikes I see on the road are Harley Davidson’s.

So what were the other 11 bikes? While we weren’t keeping a total of the other makes, I can tell you the majority of them were BMW’s, with a few crotch rockets thrown in for good measure. Oh yea, I saw one other Triumph, a Bonneville.

What’s With The Harley Davidson Obsession?

So tell me, what’s with the Harley obsession? With so many choices available, why is everyone choosing a Harley? I know when I decided to buy a Triumph, one of the major selling points to me was that it was different. Is it the dependability? I kind of doubt that based upon what I’ve read. Is it the great riding suspension? Again, not from what I’ve heard. What is it? Somebody clue me in, I’m dying to know.