| Author | Message | ||
     Mike_dinger |
EICMA: ATK Partners With Hyosung, Plans to Enter Street Market. Publish date: Nov 13, 2009 ATK Motorcycles has partnered with S&T Motors, the South Korean maker of Hyosung vehicles. The partnership eventually will produce a small-displacement ATK streetbike to be sold through Harley-Davidson dealers, ATK announced earlier this week at EICMA. “The goal of the partnership is to strengthen the competitive position of both companies,” an ATK news release stated. “Each company will continue to be run separately, but will work together on several specific cooperative projects involving new product development, distribution, manufacturing and purchasing.” The press release quoted Taekwon Kim, CEO of S&T Motors, as saying, “I believe this partnership will provide substantial benefits to S&T and ATK and both companies’ dealers, employees, suppliers and shareholders for years to come. We have long admired ATK and are excited about working together to strengthen both companies. S&T can benefit from ATK’s substantial experience in the American motorcycle market and ATK’s presence inside the Harley dealer network.” ATK CEO Frank White stated, “S&T and ATK complement each other well, and we are very excited about our new relationship. By joining forces, we believe we can strengthen our distribution network, reduce our production costs, spread development costs and substantially accelerate our entry into the streetbike business. We also look forward to sharing some of our off-road technology with S&T. The ATK and S&T management teams should work well together. “There will be some differentiation between S&T branded products and the ATK-branded products,” White continued. “S&T will send parts from Korea, and we will integrate those with our own American and European parts. These American-Utah-assembled motorcycles will be targeted to be sold through a select group of Harley-Davidson dealers who are looking for a quality smaller-displacement motorcycle to be sold under the U.S. ATK brand name. “The management at Harley-Davidson knows what we are doing with some of their dealers; however, they do not endorse our activities in any way,” White added. | ||
| Unrealtrip |
Wow major WTF moment. Esp since half the HD crowd is typically sporting that whole MIA POW flag stuff, assuming a lot them really are vets of wars for that age group, I can just see it now. A bunch of guys that went through the Korean war, sporting the whole US flag thing on everything they own, yet walking into an HD dealer only to see little 200cc Korean import bikes. That'll go well... | ||
| Froggy |
Whats the WTF? How is this any different than dealers that have been selling Vespa's for years or various other non-HD motorcycles? Also, repost. http://www.badweatherbikers.com/cgibin/discus/show .cgi?4062/514002 | ||
| Shopguy10 |
Vespa is Italian not Asian. I think that HD's efforts could have been better served discussing such a project with Buell. It makes more sense for HD/Buell to look into making smaller displacement motos instead of going the foreign route. It's Harley Davidson for crap sake! You don't get much more American than that! Why "sellout" one of the few American companies left? | ||
| Ironhead1977 |
American,apparently you guys haven't read the labels. | ||
| Buewulf |
I know of several HD dealers that sell other brands. What makes this different? | ||
| Cityxslicker |
That ATK makes a 450cc dirt bike  It just needs lights and plate | ||
| Xbimmer |
The dealer where I bought my Uly soon after started selling Chinese-owned Benelli Tre's and Indonesian-made Schwinn scooters. What a joke I thought, they can't properly service my Buell yet they're gonna service these things. I would have loved to have a pic of one of their inked-out hard guy techs working on a cute pink Schwinn on the stand. Who cares anyway, if a few dealers want to go for it so what? If had been an arrangement through the MooCo that would have been a real face slap... | ||
| Xcephasx |
i think the wtf is that they just axed buell, an american company, only to sell these bikes a week later... | ||
| Froggy |
Many of these dealers never carried Buell in the first place. |
