• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

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    Thanks for your patience and support!

KTM/Husqvarna... now how will this play out?

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Hell for Leather is reporting that KTM CEO Stefan Pierer is finalizing a deal to acquire BMW’s subsidiary offroad motorcycle marque, Husqvarna, via Pierer Industries AG. Pierer is part owner in KTM through shares in Cross AG, which is also backed by Indian moto giant Bajaj. It was originally thought that KTM was vying to acquire the small motor maker outright, but as more information has come in, the situation has gotten more nuanced.
HFL goes on to quote Nieuwsmotor’s Iwan van der Valk on how the deal is apparently going down:
“It’s not KTM that is buying Husqvarna, but KTM’s CEO and part-owner Stefan Pierer. He bought it with his ‘other’ company Pierer Industries AG. This is not connected to Cross AG, the owner company in which both Pierer and Bajaj hold shares. The next six months will be spent looking how Husqvarna can cooperate with KTM but a new model is already promised to revealed at the 2013 EICMA in november.”
Others are weighing in on the deal, concluding that this is less about one offroad focused company buying another, but instead about a bigger play from Bajaj. From moto journalist Mark Gardiner:
“KTM’s a great, but small, company. It’s easy to see the impending purchase of Husqvarna for what it is, another move by the big Indian motorcycle company, Bajaj — which already owns a big piece of KTM — to diversify its portfolio of brands, manufacturing capability, and design talent.”
The move comes as a surprise from a BMW observer point of view. BMW’s investment in the brand was not insubstantial and it seems like their efforts to truly grow the marque were just really getting started. Perhaps BMW thought it better to stay focused on its own lineup of motorcycles and leave the niche motorcycles to others. Stay tuned as we keep tabs on this developing story.
 
Sounds like maybe a done deal?

I am kinda excited.

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K
 
Has anybody actually worked today?It's been real hard for me too since this thread started........:mad::(:):applause::thinking:
 
Forums are great! You get the inside scoop on events, while websites like CycleNews still has not posted a thing. CycleNews will eventually post something when it is a week late. I just find it kind of funny... Cycle Anti-News.
 
I just got our invitation to the KTM dealer show in Austria. This has been planned since last year. The itinerary includes a dinner with Mr Pierer. So make of that what you will. Looks like a play by him and Bajaj to expand thier footprint. So the owner/owners of KTM will own Husqvarna. I get the feeling that they saw a bargin and were in a position to buy. My guess is the situation is pretty fluid and developing even with the major players. Looks like Bajaj money is in this deal too so both companies will be joined at the hip so to speak. To the extent of happens now is pure speculation but I will weigh in. Here are some numbers to think about. The worldwide sales of motorcycles is 44 million most of which is China, India and emerging countries. Honda owns 25 % of that market. I think that Pierer and Bajaj are looking at that huge market and want some of it. KTM is already getting some of it now. Even if you could get 1% that would be 440,000 units. 4 times what KTM/Husqvarna is selling now. This a bold move by Bajaj and it goes beyond dirt bikes. Just my opinion.
 
EU has some pretty strict anti-competition rules. Maybe this is the reason that Pierer bought the company instead of Cross/KTM? I am wondering if the EU would have blocked such a sale if KTM bought the company themselves? Sounds like KTM is going to be involved with the future of Husqvarna in one way or another.
 
I am "unliking" this stupid thread. Total crap for sure, I can only dream that ktm has nothing to do with Husq and the Piereier dude brings his bank roll and gives us a solid modern smoker, with and without the old man button.
 
Scotty I have said for awhile now that the Europeans smell bood in the water with reguards to the Japanese. The VW aquisition of Ducati, BMW going solidly into the sport motorcycle business and now the 3rd player gearing up. Add the efforts of Harley and Polaris and all of these companies are digging deep into the big 4's pockets.
 
Here is a question for all of you. Now that India owns Rover, Jaguar part of KTM and now it looks like Husqvarna are you starting to look a that country in a different light? Like I said earlier in this thread, India is becoming a major player on the worlds economic stage.
 
How I long for those "Halcyon Days" of Early Cagiva USA..... National MX and SX Team, Husky in the mix for National Enduro Champioships, lots of Huskys in local series, broad range of bikes bikes from 50cc Husky Boy to the TE610E DS and back across the pond.... Multiple WEC and Supermoto Championships. The Castiglioni and Ferracci families definitely had passion!
 
Both India and China are developing enough funding to be major players, but they lack the manufacturing infrastructure (improving fast) and the brand credibility and distribution networks. Buying Volvo, Jag, Land Rover, KTM..etc. gets them instantly known brands and an existing network of dealers around the world.

I dont thing that Jags will be assembled in Coventry forever....or if they are it will be bolting together modules from offshore. Design and Engineering is another thing though. What we see is outfits like BMW and VW do the engineering at HQ in Germany and then assembly around the world. Motorcycles are built much the same way.

The trend is far from over, and someday India and China will be drivers of the purchase side of the equation too as their consumers become more prosperous.
 
Truedat! My 07 SM510R felt like a true race bred Italian beast. I used to call it "Martello Rosso" " The Red Hammer"
Ferracci's guys breathed all over that bike and it was a beast.
I kinda likes seeing MV Augusta on the side of my frame too haha
 
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