• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

Husqvarna Motorcycle brand will be re-launched later this year

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This sounds interesting to me ...

But possibly the most interesting piece of news is that it is expected that the Husqvarna Motorcycle brand will be re-launched later this year. Exactly what the re-launching will entail we don’t yet know. But the most likely place for this is the EICMA motorcycle show in Milan, November 7-10. That gives Pierer Industrie AG time, but not a lot of time, to get their house in order and to implement their master plan.

http://www.enduro21.com/index.php/c...r-industrie-ag-acquires-husqvarna-motorcycles
 
relaunched? That's a bit cocky. They merely bought it. It's not like it was gone for 5 years and they brought it back to life.
 
Glad to see their moving quick. They probably need to "relaunch" quickly to replace the BMW stuff. I'm actually really excited to hear this. An owner that feels like nothing is just "good enough" will constant development. Sure beats sitting on a design for years.
 
I am glad they are rid of BMW. BMW does relate better to the scooter crowd they are pursuing. In any case I hope the new owners allow Husky to go in its own direction to achieve off-road superiority. Husky doesn't need to be another KTM or a manufacturer of street bikes, they need to dominate the nasty trails that gave them so may world championships. Good luck to them.
 
Switchback you make a fair comment re BMW, I felt their presence was starting to impact on the brand with some questionable releases such as the Nuda, However I rather fear that KTM is not going to be a passive owner and let the creative juices at Husky flow. They will stamp their authority on the product. This is where the uncertainly lies. Most of us who ride a lot get to ride mates bikes. I used to love the 04-06 KTM 450's, thought it was brilliant apart from high speed head shake. It was a torque tractor and would just pull and pull. So KTM steps up and plonks in a short stroke revvy SXC motor with reliabilty issues and makes a real sows ear out of it. The 449/511 is a nicer enduro bike than the 450 EXC (think it is slightly reversed in the SXC to TC with the TC still a tad heavy and a tad under powered). KTM must declair their hand very early or loose patronage. I beleive a delay will see those who like less mainstram bikes reconsider offerings from Beta, Gas Gas, TM and now Ossa. WE have seen this year what KTM has finally done to Husaberg.
 
Did they make the same statements about Husaberg that have been made regarding Husqvarna?

Stefan Pierer: "We think that with Husqvarna we can be active in another niche and take more of the market especially from the Japanese brands. We will with this brand's products focus primarily on brands such as Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki. We would like the niche brand to go to a sale of 10,000 units per year and then go on from there. For that Husqvarna must go back to his roots, it was much too far astray. The brand has a wonderful history but because of a wrong model policy it was completely on the wrong track. it was in terms of dealer network not ready to sell two cylinders for the street. We will work with Husqvarna go back to its origins. We will therefore soon be back in motocross and then in supermoto, both sports which Husqvarna previously been dominant. Within the next year we will develop an appropriate motorcycle with the specifications and character that belongs to a Husqvarna. "

I'm sure hoping/believing that Pierer will let the Husqvarna minds do their thing. That can be done and still be in the context of his comments on parts and manufacturing sharing/sourcing. Cadillac didn't build Corvettes, but they had the same brakes, carbs, alternators, etc.
 
Relaunched? What ajoke. Reality is that husky was chewing up ktm sales, especialy with the tr650 and strada nuda was competition to the duke and others that they just dont need. Jap buyers will always be jap buyers, very hard to win them over. However the nuda and tr650 was just begining to get some interest from those that love euro machines but new to husky. Everyone nows how good the offroad line up is. Expect to see a very limited product line from now on, probably just the 250/310 and maybe the two strokes. I feel sorry for the italian factory guys, theyd be feeling screwed right now.
 
Reality is that husky was chewing up ktm sales
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Really? Husky sold something like 10k bikes last year, which was it's best year. KTM sold more than that with one model and a total sales of 107k. Not much of a bite.
SP already said he plans to use Husky to compete with Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki. Sounds to me like Husky is going to be an entry level brand.
 
This is absolutely the worst thing that could happen (again) to Husqvarna. Now a plaything of KTM, with mostly Indian backers! WTF do Indians know about dirt-bikes?. BMW brought the kind of investment that the likes of Sherco,GAS GAS, TM etc could only dream of. BMW have bought them bang up to date, state of the art factory, massive improvement in quality, excellent new machines in the 449/511. For me there has always been a pallpable dislike of BMW in the off-road world - had husky introduced something like the 449 without BMW - would the bikes have received SO many negative reviews? No way. Dont expect much cos you aint gonna get it, Stick to 10k bikes a year with the current set up bits of marketing here, bits of tinkering there. Another Husaberg. Slightly more exotic testbed now for new KTM's. Now this part of KTMs' competition has been nullified - why go on improving it - makes no sense. Just keep it ticking along niceley in you're back pocket. Husky fans are a loyal bunch and we've just been shafted. 110 years of history now counts for nothing. The future was bright but it's not orange.
 
lets just hope he turns away from the "DARK SIDE" and we all dont see orange on the horizon..
 
It's nice to see they want to compete with the Japanese. Kawasaki is always winning the shoot outs, not KTM. So this could me a better product that is still priced right ;)
 
Huskyrider577 said:
Now a plaything of KTM, with mostly Indian backers! WTF do Indians know about dirt-bikes?
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Seems like they know enough to put KTM on the top of virtually every single off-road competition in the world, barring one or two here or there that they haven't quite gotten. :excuseme:

I understand people not wanting Husky to be another KTM. I don't understand people who act like KTMs are crappy, or they don't know about dirt bikes. KTM is the premier manufacturer of performance dirt bikes in the world, period.

(For the record, I have never owned a KTM, and I own two Huskies, but facts are facts!)
 
Kyle Tarry said:
I understand people not wanting Husky to be another KTM. I don't understand people who act like KTMs are crappy, or they don't know about dirt bikes. KTM is the premier manufacturer of performance dirt bikes in the world, period.

(For the record, I have never owned a KTM, and I own two Huskies, but facts are facts!)
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KTMs aren't crappy. They just seem to be overrated. I had a KTM too, and I'm around them (practically lost in sea of orange) all the time. For my money, the Husqvarna is a better machine. Perhaps I just expected KTM to live up to the extreme hype, and was disappointed when it turned out to be just another machine.
 
Darkside said:
Really? Husky sold something like 10k bikes last year, which was it's best year. KTM sold more than that with one model and a total sales of 107k. Not much of a bite.
SP already said he plans to use Husky to compete with Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki. Sounds to me like Husky is going to be an entry level brand.
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Yeah, because champions ride entry level bikes like Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha.

Kyle Tarry said:
I don't understand people who act like KTMs are crappy, or they don't know about dirt bikes. KTM is the premier manufacturer of performance dirt bikes in the world, period.
Click to expand...

It's 90% rider and 10% bike.

Ryan Villopoto is reigning SX champ. If it was because of Kawi, The top 3 or 4 bikes would all be green. (ie: not ripe yet... lol)
 
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