Polaris Shuts Victory Motorcycles with Immediate Effect !!!!
9th January 2017
Polaris Shuts Victory Motorcycles with Immediate Effect !!!!
Today, the Chairman and CEO of Polaris, Scott Jones announced * That Polaris Industries is winding down Victory motorcycles operations
The writing was on the wall when Polaris bought the Indian brand, industry insiders wondered how the company would be able to position the Victory brand versus Indian. And it appears that Polaris never succeeded to give Victory its own identity and strong image. In a challenging market, the result was poor sales compared to Indian.
“This was an incredibly difficult decision for me, my team and the Polaris Board of Directors,” said Polaris Industries Chairman and CEO Scott Wine. “Over the past 18 years, we have invested not only resources, but our hearts and souls, into forging the Victory Motorcycles brand, and we are exceptionally proud of what our team has accomplished. Since inception, our teams have designed and produced nearly 60 Victory models that have been honoured with 25 of the industry’s top awards. The experience, knowledge, infrastructure and capability we’ve built in those 18 years gave us the confidence to acquire and develop the Indian Motorcycle brand, so I would like to express my gratitude to everyone associated with Victory Motorcycles and celebrate your many contributions.”
Several factors influenced today’s announcement. Victory has struggled to establish the market share needed to succeed and be profitable. The competitive pressures of a challenging motorcycle market have increased the headwinds for the brand. Given the significant additional investments required for Victory to launch new global platforms that meet changing consumer preferences, and considering the strong performance and growth potential of Indian Motorcycle, the decision to more narrowly focus Polaris’ energy and investments became quite clear.
Whether or not we’ll see some nice discounted end of marque’ bargains remains to be seen…
I’ve had test rides on Harley’s , Indians , and Victory , loved the Victory , and will be striving to buy one still , it did wake up the sleeping giant , which is a good thing for people who are to blinkered to try before they buy , it created more competition on pricing , it was fresh , youthful , exciting , sad to see them close the doors .
I got my Gunner last year and love it, i think Polaris are being very short sighted in dropping the Victory badge, if it hadn’t been for the Gunner i would have bought a Harley as for me the Indian motorcycles look shit (i just don’t like the look of them). As soon as Polaris bought the Indian brand the writing was on the wall for the Victory’s, you could see it in the dealers hardly and bits and bobs for the Victory rider but shit loads of stuff if you wanted an Indian. Yes i am pissed of and now wished i had been a sheep and bought a Harley, but then saying that i will now really be rider a rare and different motorcycle which is one of the reasons i got a Victory in the first place