HD needed a "cultural (global) boost. The plan was to get into popular culture by being the first in electric bikes and there by - get into the "good graces" of the global culture.
Historically one man showed the world how to wear a superhero cape and beat the cultural door down - becoming immortal within pop culture in the process while doing it. All this free publicity paid global sales dividends for HD for decades to follow.
It is not just the bikes... Knievel was a guy that the media just could not take the lens away from. Harley Davidson was the winner and so was America.
Today the programmed cultural view of America is vastly different from what it was but WHO ELSE could put the colors RED, White, and Blue, in the media's face and make them cover the spectacle right after Vietnam and the cultural aftereffects?
This--(the WHO ELSE)-- is of course a rhetorical question that I do not need the answer to.
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