2011 Victory bikes

Yesterday Victory announced their 2011 models and accessories.  I was hoping for an 8ball Cross Country - it would be an instabuy for me.  If you go back a page you will find my blog on the test drive I had a couple months ago.  I will be testing out the 2011 model at the end of August when the tour comes to this area - can;t wait.

Nothing ground breaking, mostly expected changes.  All bikes get the 106 engine.  Tweaked transmission to have less whine and a neutral finder.  For the Cross Country two new colors - blue and white.  Also a large trunk that I think is ugly, but useful for long hauls.  With the trunk it should have more cargo capacity than a goldwing, wtf?  Soft saddlebags are an option.  Basically with those changes it shows why you don't buy a first year model vehicle.

The Ness signature series looks awesome.  This is partly why I am attracted to Victory.  It's cool to have a big name custom bike builder associated with the brand.  While the Ness family does work on Harley they aren't fond of htem.  Most Harley owners are very traditional so it is difficult to think out of the box and make them happy.  My sister says the same thing - she's a designer for Kuryakyn.  They have to follow certain rules designing Harley parts, but are pretty much unrestricted for other bikes.  This is why I probably won't own a Harley.  They aren't bad bikes, just stuck in the 80s with 80s styling.  I think this is relecting in the market.  Out of all of the manufactures that sell in the US Victory went up in sales this year, Triumph stayed the same, everyone else went down.  Harley went down the second most just behind Yamaha.  The companies that went up, stayed the same, or didn't go down much came out with interesting new bikes.

One of the added features is a speedo unlock you can get at the dealer.  It adds features to the speedo like a second trip, ambient temp, voltage meter, etc...  Calling it an unlock makes it sound like the feature was always there.

The big thing is Victory is attacking Harley pretty hard with these new models.  They put up a series of youtube commercials.  They are all basically the same just feating differnet models.  However, I think the narator says Hardly Davidson in the Hammer vs Vrod video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgH2WW1bRtY[/youtube]