All Out Of Good Ideas – The Excelsior-Henderson Revival
That’s right. Someone is making the argument in 2017 that what the U.S. motorcycle market needs is another company building heavyweight cruisers.
Aaron, Bell International, the Denver firm, issued a statement yesterday saying the firm has been retained “to seek a strategic relationship for the reintroduction of the brand to the marketplace.”
For those of you with better things to do than study defunct motorcycle companies, the short version of the history is that Ignaz Schwinn of bicycle fame bought Excelsior in the early 20th century and built it into one of the big three U.S. manufacturers, alongside Harley-Davidson and Indian. He later bought Henderson, combining the two companies. Excelsior-Henderson stopped building motorcycles in the Great Depression but was revived in the early 1990s by Dan Hanlon. The new Excelsior-Henderson spent millions of dollars building a huge plant in Minnesota (and got millions in government incentives) but produced fewer than 2,000 motorcycles before going out of business.
Yesterday’s announcement quotes Aaron, Bell President Ralph Bellizzi as saying that “the resurgence of manufacturing pride and interest in motorsports” makes this a good time for investors to revive the brand.
Read More: https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/bad-idea-of-the-week-excelsior-henderson-revival
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