• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Actual news on the KTM purchase of Husqvarna

Mike-AK said:
BMW owned Husqvarna at the time the X-Lite engine was developed.
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I saw my first X-Lite in person in July '07, at the WEC (Now EWC) USGP in Hancock, NY. Bart Oblucki was riding it in E1 and there was a spare bike too. This pre dates the BMW purchase, by just a bit. BMW owned Husky when the bikes finally went on sale, but they didn't develop the concept.... Cagiva did!
 
Mike-AK said:
The best Husky's ever were made 1979 through 1982. Painting them white in '83 killed the Swedish bikes, and they have never been the same since. A lot of Husky dealers went KTM after the refrigerator white bikes. They went from not being able to keep enough '82s in stock to having a showroom full of '83s they couldn't sell. The Italian bikes were nice, but the 2-strokes were getting a bit long in the tooth. You can only resist change for so long before the competition overwhelms you, and from what I have read, the old tooling was on its last legs. With regard to 4-strokes, the X-Lites are nice race motors, but marketing them as TE dual purpose bikes has put a bad taste in some buyers mouths and limited sales when folks realize the maintenance that comes along with them, along with a transmission that is useless on the street. That and they run like crap unless you remove all the junk that makes them street legal in the first place. Go ahead and grieve and be nostalgic if you want, but an infusion of technology and modern production is, in my opinion, exactly what Husky needs. BMW failed because that is not possible in the labor environment in Italy. The choice was either KTM or the death of Husqvarna. At least this way we get parts support.
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You do realize the '83 white bikes weren't made in Italy... right?
 
Norman Foley said:
I don't remember anyone being turned off by the '83 Huskys....
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The 83 white bikes got me started in the husky fold. It was the photos of US Team Husky winning everything in the eastern enduros and styling it in the desert races along with the Euro ISDE's withe the Swedish Team looking cool and winning the trophies that made me buy my first 83 500 XC. What a beast! Then the single shock 85 came - just had to have one of those! Yep, it was the white bikes that did it for me. I've still got them.
 
Norman Foley said:
You do realize the '83 white bikes weren't made in Italy... right?
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Yes, I realized that when I wrote that they were "Swedish bikes" in my second sentence. You do realize Sweden is not in Italy...right? And yes, the white bikes were so popular that three years of dismal sales resulted in a brand that had been based in Sweden for almost 100 years being sold to the Italians at bargain basement prices.
 
Mike-AK said:
Yes, I realized that when I wrote that they were "Swedish bikes" in my second sentence. You do realize Sweden is not in Italy...right? And yes, the white bikes were so popular that three years of dismal sales resulted in a brand that had been based in Sweden for almost 100 years being sold to the Italians at bargain basement prices.
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Sorry to misunderstand your "phrasing".
Sales were not dismal, by any means that I remember.... Husky was dominating off road in the US, like KTM does now. Electrolux had most likely made the decision, to divest the motorcycle division at that time though. It wasn't about sales, it was about that Electrolux didn't see it as part of their core business.
 
silverpilen said:
The 83 white bikes got me started in the husky fold. It was the photos of US Team Husky winning everything in the eastern enduros and styling it in the desert races along with the Euro ISDE's withe the Swedish Team looking cool and winning the trophies that made me buy my first 83 500 XC. What a beast! Then the single shock 85 came - just had to have one of those! Yep, it was the white bikes that did it for me. I've still got them.
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Exactly. Husqvarna was seriously dedicated to open range riding and enduro racing. The 400 WRX was the world's best enduro bike in 85 and the 86 400 Enduro was even better. In 87, Husky added the 430 WR and XC, great bikes and my favorites. They had really refined the bikes for enduros by the mid-80's. And thank goodness they did. What a joy to ride, with a personality. I think I like them more than the modern bikes. If I could only add a rear disc brake...
 
Mike-AK said:
Yes, I realized that when I wrote that they were "Swedish bikes" in my second sentence. You do realize Sweden is not in Italy...right? And yes, the white bikes were so popular that three years of dismal sales resulted in a brand that had been based in Sweden for almost 100 years being sold to the Italians at bargain basement prices.
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Styling & colour choices aside, the problem in 1983 was that nobody wanted twin shock bikes anymore, no matter how good the ITC system was, them market had moved on. The 85 single shock changed that and brought buyers back.
 
Norman Foley said:
I don't remember anyone being turned off by the '83 Huskys....
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I wanted an '82 Husky 250 when they hit the market and I wanted an '83 Husky when they hit the market. I remember seeing the new '83 bikes and couldn't believe how cool they looked. The Husky took a huge step (maybe a risk back then) in styling, and the bikes were awesome. That is when I became a true brand zealot.
 
Mike-AK said:
Electrolux sucks.
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image.axd
 
I like my white bike. I hope the "new ones" will look like this. In 1985 Mark Blackwell was running Husqvarna USA and with the single shock Husky it was the first year to turn a profit in years. What I would like to know is I think it was in 2004 Electrolux bought a really small percentage of Husqvarna motorcycles to be able to go on board meetings and such. I never have heard of what happen to that when B.M.W bought them and now with KTM.

One thing about K.T.M. hear in Northern Ohio is I have rode Huskys starting in the 80's and not ever had a K.T.M. rider bash Husky. Of course there has been some " talk of what brand best" but nothing bad. Ktm use to have their head quarters in Lorian Oh about 80 miles away. Most KTM riders where just happy to see someone else on bike that was not made in Japan.
 

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photoguy_43420 said:
I like my white bike. I hope the "new ones" will look like this. In 1985 Mark Blackwell was running Husqvarna USA and with the single shock Husky it was the first year to turn a profit in years. What I would like to know is I think it was in 2004 Electrolux bought a really small percentage of Husqvarna motorcycles to be able to go on board meetings and such. I never have heard of what happen to that when B.M.W bought them and now with KTM.

One thing about K.T.M. hear in Northern Ohio is I have rode Huskys starting in the 80's and not ever had a K.T.M. rider bash Husky. Of course there has been some " talk of what brand best" but nothing bad. Ktm use to have their head quarters in Lorian Oh about 80 miles away. Most KTM riders where just happy to see someone else on bike that was not made in Japan.
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Some people say that Mark Blackell's task was to take Husky USA and make it more profitable, as to make the whole Husky package more saleable. It's also said that the real prize Cagiva wanted from the Husky purchase, was the extensive Husky USA Dealer Network. They wanted this more than the brand itself, to expand the market for Cagiva and Ducati in the US. Cagiva shot themselves in the foot, by alienating most of the Husky dealers and ending up having to rebuild the dealer network from scratch.
 
Some people say that Mark Blackell's task was to take Husky USA and make it more profitable, as to make the whole Husky package more saleable. It's also said that the real prize Cagiva wanted from the Husky purchase, was the extensive Husky USA Dealer Network. They wanted this more than the brand itself, to expand the market for Cagiva and Ducati in the US. Cagiva shot themselves in the foot, by alienating most of the Husky dealers and ending up having to rebuild the dealer network from scratch.
Norman Foley, 18 minutes ago House Keeping

Amen to that brother****************************************!
 
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