Ben Van Erp did husky for a long time in the Netherlands and was very knowledgeable on the bikes even building some custom race parts for the factory teams.
Problem is in the US and I dont care what anyone says is Win on Sunday or Saturday now sell on Monday.... No race team you might as well save your money.... It dont matter that something like 95% of bikes sold get raced people still want what wins.... PERIOD and thats winning in the US a World GP or WEC Championship dont mean squat and Husky was a prime example of that for years....
Pick a big progressive partner in the USA, Polaris, and then they will have something. Polaris needs a dirt bike in their lineup and a dual sport. Licensing, branding, certification, marketing and racing would be effective, races would be won. Shineray might find some synergies.
You seem so certain that's the only path to success. Care to explain how KTM has dominated the trail bike market in the US for more than a decade despite not winning their first supercross race in the US until 2012 and not winning their first supercross championship in the big boy class until 2015?
Kurt Caselli, David Knight, Juha Salminen, Shane Watts, Charlie Mullins, Scott Plessinger, Kalib Russell come to mind...
But he wasn't the official importer since the Cagiva takeover right? MotoMondo has been for the last decade or so. Van Erp only did grey imports.
This is actually not true anymore (especially in road raced). 90% of the bikes are sold to people who ride casual. Only the remaining 10% are competition drivers.
Ya, I've seen it written several times that the old adage of win on Sunday, sell on Monday is not true very often. Obviously KTM is proving it to be correct at the moment, but Kawi, Honda and Suzuki all had sales dips when Carmichael was winning on whatever brand.
No, he was the long tome importer until BMW took over and decided to change things and reinvent the wheel which was already round. They did the same thing here in the US and also took 2 steps back on it as well.
