Here’s Why That Harley/Ducati Rumor is BS

Here’s Why That Harley/Ducati Rumor is BS

Combination of brands could be successful but is unlikely to ever occur

On Wednesday we posted a story about rumors that Harley-Davidson may be interested in purchasing Italian brand Ducati, the latter being the subject of an almost constant barrage of rumors thanks to the perceived financial difficulties of its parent company, Volkswagen AG. It was an amusing story, good for getting people talking (which is what our social media guys value above all else), but let’s cast a critical eye on this thing: it’s almost certainly not true.

Certainly there’s merit in the idea of a merger. On the surface you might think Harley and Ducati are a mismatch, but stop to think about what both companies are really good at: branding. Harley-Davidson in particular. Ducati has achieved unprecedented success in recent years in part because it (like Indian, Triumph, and BMW) has ripped whole pages from the Harley playbook. That is especially obvious in the way Ducati has delivered its Scrambler sub-brand.

So, it’s a good bet that Ducati under Harley leadership would probably look a lot like present-day Ducati but with even more trucker caps. It would be a case of the student finally getting to learn from the master. There would be some growing pains (say goodbye to the Diavel and Scrambler), but since each company operates, by and large, in a separate space it could be a pretty good pairing.

It’s a pairing, however, that won’t happen. There are myriad reasons why:

Firstly, it’s a rumor that involves Harley-Davidson. I’m not entirely sure why, but rumors about the business dealings of Milwaukee’s most famous company always seem to have legs. It’s one of those weird quirks of the universe that people want to discuss/imagine what’s happening behind the scenes at the MoCo. At least once a quarter there’s a fresh rumor that the company is facing a takeover; now instead of Harley being bought it’s a rumor of Harley doing the buying.

(Looking at RideApart’s archives it appears the takeover story has been floating around since at least 2010. And in most cases the potential buyer is named as KKR and Co., which Reuters also named as a potential Ducati buyer. That, too, should clue us in to the questionable nature of this rumor – the fact that all the usual suspects are named as suitors.)