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Harley-Davidson Sold 2,500 Pan Americas in the USA Last Year

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The debut of the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 was the headline event from 2021 - with the Bar & Shield brand offering its first motorcycle that truly deviated from the company's cruiser lineup.

An integral part of Harley-Davidson's "Hardwire" plan to restructure the company for the future, the Pan America 1250 is a conquest bike for the American bike-maker, with an eye on scooping up some sales from rival European brands.

Was it a success? That depends on whom you ask. American publications certainly seemed to think so, with the Pan America 1250 taking top honors in several of their shootouts last year. Meanwhile, the European press was less-enthused.

We will let you decide if home-team bias, on both sides of the pond, are at play there. For our money, we'd put the Ducati Multistrada V4 S in our garage before the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250, but reasonable minds can easily disagree on this thought.

Shootouts don't balance the account's books however, and for the bean-counters, the true measure of a motorcycle's success is on the showroom floor.

To that end, Harley-Davidson sold just over 2,500 units of its Pan America lineup in the USA last year, according to our Bothan spies.

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News

KTM Sold 332,881 Motorcycles in 2021 – Up 23% From Last Year

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The house of brands under KTM’s management had a very, very good year in 2021, with their parent company Pierer Mobility reporting a 23% increase in motorcycle sales over 2020’s dismal figures.

The preliminary report doesn’t break-out sales by each motorcycle brand (KTM, Husqvarna, & GasGas), but it does separate out the firm’s bicycle and e-bike figures, which have been used in the past to buoy the marketing team’s efforts.

As such, we can rest assured that today’s announcement and positive progress is real, and not the spin we were getting in 2020, which saw the Austrian outfit taking a first-time dip in sales results in the past decade.

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News

Harley-Davidson Q3 2021 Sales Are Up, But Not Really

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“Harley-Davidson delivered a solid third quarter and we have seen many of our Hardwire strategic initiatives perform well, providing encouraging initial proof points of our five-year strategy,” said Jochen Zeitz, chairman, president and CEO, Harley-Davidson.

That is how the Bar & Shield brand’s press release about its Q3 2021 sales starts out. The company goes on to acclaim its sales progress for this year, citing relevant metrics back to this time period in 2020.

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News

Harley-Davidson Posts Mixed Results for Its Q2 2021 Sales

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Harley-Davidson has released its Q2 2021 earnings report, and the results are a bit mixed for the American brand. Compared to 2020’s numbers, Harley-Davidson is showing some unsurprising gains.

As such, the North American market is up 43% compared to last year, while worldwide results bounced to a 24% gain over 2020’s figures.

The story is the same for the first six months of sales for the Bar & Shield brand, with North America up 38% compared to last year, and worldwide sales getting an 18% increase.

All of this is to be expected, of course, not only because sales were down across the board in 2020, but also because the motorcycle industry is booming in 2021. In this regard, the bar of measurement for the Bar & Shield brand is rather low.

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Bikes

Like Nothing Before It, The Harley-Davidson Sportster S Is Here

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The next generation of the Harley-Davidson Sportster is here today, with the debut of the 2021 Harley-Davidson Sportster S.

Teased originally as the Harley-Davidson 1250 Custom, we learned recently that the new bike, with its very modern design, would be designated as the next Sportster, and the name suggests that Harley-Davidson hasn’t shown us the last of this sub-brand’s rebirth.

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News

Energica Debuts Lighter, More Powerful Liquid-Cooled Electric Motor

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The global pandemic might have disrupted the plans of many motorcycle manufacturers, much to their chagrin, but the folks at Energica found a way to make a positive out of the negative situation.

Planning to upgrade their electric motorcycle offerings for the 2022 model year, the Italians have jump-started that process with a new motor design, which they are phasing into their current bike sales.

Lighter, more powerful, and water-cooled, the motor was designed and developed with the help of Italian engineering firm Mavel, and is being called the “Energica Mavel Co-Engineering” (EMCE) motor.

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Racing

Title Favorite: The SERT Suzuki GSX-R1000 Endurance Race Bike

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Long-time readers of Asphalt & Rubber will know my love of endurance racing motorcycles – there is something about these purpose-built race bikes that have to perform reliably hour-after hour that strikes my fancy.

So, upon hearing that the Suzuki Endurance Race Team (SERT) won the 24-Hours of Le Mans this weekend, it was all the excuse I needed to post up some photos of the Yoshimura-backed squad and their Suzuki GSX-R1000 race bike.

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Bikes

Updates Come to the MV Agusta Rush 1000 for the 2021 Model Year

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2021 MV Agusta Rush 1000

I will level with you…the following is a thinly veiled excuse to ogle over the latest iteration of the MV Agusta Rush 1000.

Sure, the headline news might be that this ostentatious four-cylinder streetfighter is getting some updates for the 2021 model year, thanks largely to the Euro5 emissions requirements, but this post is mostly an offering of fap-fodder, for the next time you are alone in your garage.

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