Biggest turkeys of 2018

We got a few real winners this year. You should assume the same position I do each year when I watch the Detroit Lions: passed out in my easy chair. Kick back and read as I tell you who helped ruin motorcycles over the course of this year.

Tire turkey

This guy’s got a number plate on the front of his bike that I never will. Maybe I just hold a grudge with him simply because I couldn’t hold his jockstrap on a cushion track. I'd take that criticism if it was lobbed my way. But that doesn’t change the fact that this year, I think Jared Mees is oven-roasted gold.

Remember when he got caught doping tires? And then he pulled that stunt again? AFT has enough problems trying to make flat track popular once more. Having to punish the star athlete on the winning team doesn’t put asses in seats. So, Jared, could you do me a personal favor this year, and, uh… stop doing that?

A bigger bird than Air Force One

Donald Trump, come claim your prize. You’re a turkey. Politics aside, Mr. Trump seems to have no idea how a motorcycle company works. He instituted tariffs on steel and aluminum, which made motorcycles more expensive to build, because those elements are used pretty heavily in the final product. This had the effect, in turn, of driving up the price of a good that’s already pretty expensive. Then, countries that had been affected by our tariffs retaliated, upping their own tariffs on the finished products coming back to them. (Among the targets of those tariffs were larger-displacement motorcycles, obviously affecting exports of domestically built machines like Harley and Indian.) In order to combat that and prevent their sales in those places from being crippled, Harley announced transfer of some production overseas to fulfill this silly scheme they have of selling products and staying in business.

Mr. Trump then launched a full-on Twitter tirade railing against what was a completely necessary business decision. (Oddly, though Indian also was considering a production shift, it was only H-D that seemed to catch Mr. Trump's ire.) Before you accuse me of dragging politics into motorcycling, can anyone point to a made-in-USA product on Trump’s own website? Harley’s stock is currently in the shitter. Guess those tariffs aren’t as good for the motorcycle industry as we were promised.

This must have been a potluck holiday, because our turkey-in-chief also prepared a side dish of corn. Remember the recent ethanol debacle? I like liquid corn fuel out of the Turkey bottle, not a turkey’s liquid corn in my fuel bottle.

Slice the carcass up any way you like. No matter your political stance, it seems like Don doesn't seem to give a rip about motorcyclists or motorcycle companies.

Bold old graphics

You’re not off the hook, Harley. Remember that time you launched a new set of handlebars and then decided the motorcycles attached to them were “new models?” Get me the gravy. They’re not even “bold new graphics.” Instead, you folks lazily attached paint schemes redolent of the ones on the bikes emanating from one of your most unloved periods in history and attempted to sit back and rake in the profits.

I’ll let you off easy this time if the real new models are cool. You’re mashed potato-potatoes right now, which ain’t bad… but on this plate you’re real close to the turkey.

Track turkey

Daniel Kim, you’re a bird. Your wreck on the track became everyone else’s problem to deal with when you decided to file a lawsuit. Rather than take your lumps, you took the “no personal responsibility” way out. You rode multiple laps around the track, and then rode off the track surface. It’s a track day, Danny boy, not a day in the dirt. That’s a different event.

Maybe “turkey” is too good for you. Perhaps “dodo” is a bit more apt.

Bird

This one goes out to more than just Bird, but it fits well with that whole “turkey” theme we got running here. To be fair and accurate, let’s lump all the rideshare e-scooter companies together. Bird, Lime, Spin, and whatever other one-syllable companies spring up between this piece’s writing and subsequent publishing. These companies are getting people onto two wheels easily, which is commendable. The problem, however, is that scooters are the Wild West. Rather than work with cities to develop specific rules and guidelines, the companies all seem to have operated in a “seek pardon, not permission” fashion.

This has led to the scooters being treated as standard vehicles with silly consequences. There are also serious problems with the scooters being dumped and dropped wherever riders feel is convenient. Because of this, cities like Milwaukee and San Francisco have ordered the operators to cease and desist. In Los Angeles, things went far enough that a lawsuit has been filed that alleges that the scooters, which amount effectively to detritus, are a public nuisance.

That sucks. I don’t want someone dumping crap in my neighborhood, even if it is a two-wheeler. I’m all for making motorcycling accessible and fun, but when riders should probably avoid pissing off a large portion of the population who ain’t ridin’. The companies are turning a blind eye to the naughty behavior of the turds who ride these things. What a buncha turkeys.

Happily, this is one holiday where a burnt main course is actually sort of OK in my book. (Yes, that is an instagram account devoted to the carcasses of these turkeys.)

Early birds

Let’s go ahead and nominate a few of the manufacturers for something that makes me grind my teeth: announcing a motorcycle that is so far from production that it may as well be a spaceship. Husqvarna, remember the 401 “pilen” twins? Concepts were announced at EICMA 2014, production intent in 2016, and finally, in spring of 2018, they were actually around to be bought and ridden. Four years, guys? Come on.

Yamaha, you may be the grand turkey on this one. The T7 concept came about in 2016, and we apparently can buy 2021 models late in 2020. Four years. Husky maybe can worm out of my ire because they’re not a huge company. What’s your excuse, Team Blue?

We’ve seen similar dawdling from Harley-Davidson with the LiveWire (announced in 2014, proposed for model year 2019), and Indian did this, too. In early 2017, president Steve Menneto announced that they’d launch an electric motorcycle in 2020 or 2021.

I’ll reserve judgment on Indian because of how quickly we saw the FTR1200; concept to dealer floors happened in under a year — exactly as it should be. Go ahead, whet my appetite with some hors d'oeuvres. But don’t send an appetizer to a table that has a reservation for next week, yannow? I understand the intricacies of modern manufacturing, safety, and emissions testing, but come on, guys. If you show me a motorcycle and I’m too old to ride the damn thing by the time it’s on a sales floor, isn’t that a problem?

My mouth is very dry. I need gravy. I will say that I was pleased with many of the bright spots in motorcycling this year, and most of these chuckleheads were exceptions, not the rule, which bodes well for 2019.

I’ma go clear the plates. Remind me if I missed anything, please.