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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Is husqvarna's identity gone?

Hey As long as it spits rocks and roots and puts a smile on your face, go out and ride it. I like having people confused what the heck I'm riding and not recognize my bike over anything they've seen before. That puts a smile on my face!

The European market is huge for off road bikes. A person only needs to look up any model dirtbike on "YouTube" and watch some of the helmetcam videos from all over the world and some of the languages spoken on these videos certainly aren't ones I'm familiar with but the riding and development of off road riding in these European Countries and South American, Australian you name it.,is bigger than ever before.

The "Huskys" name plates regardless of where they were built, have been around for a very, very long time. They will do fine I think.
Look up new Maico dirt bikes for instance. These nuts are still making bikes as well, on a shoestring budget and even selling modern watercooled 2 strokes for transplants in there earliar frames separate as well. They have a watercooled $ 12,000.00 700cc+or- bad ass 2 stroke single cylinder off road dirt bike and other smaller sizes as well, that may be very limited production. if you got that kind of cash and people are buying them. Who knows if parts will be available a few years from now.
 
Now the italian husky brand has gone. So will the great pricing. I believe we wont see $11, 000 on road race bikes any more.... Ive got give it to BMW they kept their prices affordable... New rumors are saying around $13500 $ AU for a fe501... guess it will be time for me to start counting my pennies. ?..doh.. No wait.. what about BMW....
 
We went to a junior race yesterday and there was l lot of talk about the new Huskys and how cool they look buy the younger people in our club. I believe that the new Husky will appeal to the younger set muck like Swedish and Italian Husky appealed to so many of us. a new area in Husqvarna`s history has started don't forget the past but embrace the future this will be good for Husqvarna.
 
I agree, assuming one thing. Husqvarna do evolve as a individual brand... By this I mean "no KTM logo parts... and a true non influenced KTM design"... then and only then will my opinon change. I hope this to be a good thing.. I actualy liked Husaberg back when they had there own stucture... they were unique and that made them special.
 
Amen to that "Huskydude59"

I think they will go in there own direction as "St.Pierre" or what ever they call themselves, allowed the Husaberg engineering teams to do a few years back. They truly were allowed to do there own research and development and go off and do what they wanted. Awesome bikes! I would love to have one of the 2010 or 2011, 70' degree 570s, they were iconic in that they were different and they did what they thought was the best thing to do and flipped the engine upsidedown literally. What great front ground clearance alone those bikes frames have. The last few years models were nothing more than a KTM engine on the larger displacement series bikes with a different name on the side cover casted in. Whatever. Still an awesome machine. The KTMs even called them selves 525,530,500 and they were all the same size for a few years right!

I believe they probably said about the same thing at the manufacturing/assembly/foundry in India, When the side cover investment casting molds were getting made. I believe thats where the engines were made under the watchful eye of KTMs engineers. I didn't look that up right now either. Maybe it was "Sri Lanka". This outsourcing type of building things is all too common nowadays. Hell look at modern Jumbojets. Nothing is wrong with that. I couldn't believe it though when they stopped the 70"degree design. I knew something was up. Then BMW sold out the Husqvarna name to KTMs stockholders, St.Pierre or what ever. I haven't bothered to look up what the name is, thats not important. I don't want to seem lame for not caring or be corrected for it, by making this post.

My point is the "Kymco" produced engines designed by BMW or whoever wants to take credit for it are a quality piece and I couldn't at first accept the fact that they relabled the molds to say Husqvarna at one point either and I have both engines. BMW and Husqvarna, both 449s. A 2009 BMW G450X and a 2011 TC 449. I'm over it. Husky calling one a 511 when it is infact closer to a 477cc doesn't make any difference other than to establish it as different than the Husky's previous 510, right? The "Kymco" product is some of the nicest craftsmanship I've seen casting wise and I'm sure it was under the watchful eyes of some worldly traveling German or Italian Executive, visiting the China factory assuring and making multiple trips back and forth to make things right. They did a good job. BMW getting out of Extreme Enduro Competition to me was a bummer. Them passing the torch To Husky wasn't a bummer though. There success speaks for themselves. I mean look at the Speedbrain teams and Touratech Etc.

The "Husqvarna" I imagine will have it's own designed engines hopefully in the next few years like the "Husabergs" did there for awhile. They will still source there "WP" suspension components from "Pierre" since they have joined forces with KTM years ago. They can't call them "White Power" anymore. Everyone is still to sensitive to accept that. Even though the guy I bought my old "White Power shocks" for my TRX Honda back in 86 was named "Frank White" if I remember correctly. please don't correct me if I'm wrong again, I didn't dig out the old reciept for buying them. Its been awhile but you get what I'm saying. The quality resources of this Austrian Giant I'm sure can fill the "niche" market to do what we all want. I don't expect to see Marzochhi forks or Sachs shocks showing up on the Huskys anytime soon unless some one swaps out for a pair of 52mm or larger diameter "Shivers" on there own. This will happen and the triple trees will be available to do this I'm positive. Hell Marzochhi will provide them for you with the forks.

This will be an evolution in the making. We are all along for a new era to unfold before our eyes in the next few years. Lets see if they come out with a few more models like Supermoto's, crosscountry racers with wide ratio gearboxes instead of just the MotoCross and Enduro models they now newly have. It will come. License plates, turn signals, horns and all. Lets also hope they all come here to the U.S. too because there is a huge market for them thats for sure.

I don't have enough money to have all the toys I would like because I have to many areas of interest now. Toys I'm not going to sell because they cost me years of my life and too much money to build and I'm not planning to take on any big builds anytime soon. I'm getting to old and beat up working for our Federal Govt. I'm still to poor to afford the ones I got now. Dirt bikes are simply an outlet to drain some of my ideas and keep my brain transfering ideas to reality, for relatively little investment. Its something to enjoy just to get out and ride to clear my mind.

The future of the "Husqvarnas" coming from Austria will be everything and anything to anybody and the only thing still to some of those bodys. Trust me. They've got a greatly stocked bin of the worlds best parts to choose from in the way of components and manufacturing resources to pick from thats for sure.

I know this is a long winded post but as long as I can write. I still find it hard to put my thoughts down into words for others to understand..I'm sure most of you think thats B.S. right about now.

Thanks for hearing me out.
 
Actually Husqvarna may have gained more identity back to it's roots. Husaberg was the early vestiges (left behind swedish guys that didn't make the Cagiva move) They developed an awesome bike which KTM bought years later to help with their four stroke development. The KTMs you see now have that engine technology, so now Huqsvarna is kinda back to which they came (or a little closer) Seems to be one big circle to me.
P.s. Austria is the right direction back towards Sweden. (Even though I did really like the Italian built Bikes) IMHO
 
huskydude59 said:
I agree, assuming one thing. Husqvarna do evolve as a individual brand... By this I mean "no KTM logo parts... and a true non influenced KTM design"... then and only then will my opinon change. I hope this to be a good thing.. I actualy liked Husaberg back when they had there own stucture... they were unique and that made them special.
Click to expand...


Never going to happen. I'm sure what we are seeing is basically what we are going to get. Motors and frames with always be shared and he said that himself.
 
Captnemo said:
Actually Husqvarna may have gained more identity back to it's roots. Husaberg was the early vestiges (left behind swedish guys that didn't make the Cagiva move) They developed an awesome bike which KTM bought years later to help with their four stroke development. The KTMs you see now have that engine technology, so now Huqsvarna is kinda back to which they came (or a little closer) Seems to be one big circle to me.
P.s. Austria is the right direction back towards Sweden. (Even though I did really like the Italian built Bikes) IMHO
Click to expand...


KTM bought berg to figure out how to build a lightweight 4 stroke and came up with the much loved RFS. Then they let berg play a little with the 70 degree motor but int he end are simply rebadged and updated KTMs which is fine but don'texpect completely different bikes from the new husky. IMHO
 
Well I guess its a wait and see type of deal then. I think I should be asking myself if I really want to go down that road again.
 
Its simple for me...I bought a Husky because I have family history with the brand.

I also bought one because I can't afford a KTM or Berg.

Looks like I'm out.
 
I
Captnemo said:
Actually Husqvarna may have gained more identity back to it's roots. Husaberg was the early vestiges (left behind swedish guys that didn't make the Cagiva move) They developed an awesome bike which KTM bought years later to help with their four stroke development. The KTMs you see now have that engine technology, so now Huqsvarna is kinda back to which they came (or a little closer) Seems to be one big circle to me.
P.s. Austria is the right direction back towards Sweden. (Even though I did really like the Italian built Bikes) IMHO
Click to expand...

I agree.......it is a step in the right direction, a re-unification of sorts with some of the swedish old guard identity. What's a Husaberg anyway? There was a reason the first 3 letters started with H-U-S. Everybody borrows from everybody from a technology standpoint, and I can see improvements and refinements coming that will render much of these discussions moot anyway. Remember when the linkage suspensions came out? Everyone ended up with a variation on the theme. Technology is moving at a breakneck pace, and it is competition driven. I can see KTM / Husqvarna being at the forefront of next gen dirt bike engineering. The jap big 4 engineering prowess speaks for itself. They will all continue to push technology individually and all end up looking like each other collectively.

The white and blue bikes are spelled correctly now.......and I'm gonna get one. Long live Husqvarna dirt bikes.
 
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