Wearing black leather and riding gigantic Harleys, a motorbike gang thunders through northern Georgia as if en route to a rumble. But the simply rumble in support of this gang–the Atlanta Harley Owners Group (HOG)–is the solitary in their stomachs. It’s any more Sunday ride in the nation in support of the assembly, and as usual it trimmings with a feast. “We live to ride, and we ride to have,” says weapon assistant director B.K. Ellis, a systems analyst.

Ellis is solitary of 55 HOG members on the day out, mostly white-collar types with secret lives as bikers–and add up attentiveness to their Harleys. “It’s the imagery, the mystique,” says Ellis. The assembly was gearing up in support of a gigantic state-run rally of HOG chapters in July: 20,000 owners were predictable to ride into Atlanta in support of a three-day faction to mark the start of Harley-Davidson’s 100th anniversary celebration. Some would be hard-core guys with sizeable tattoos and bad tempers, the sort who after typified the Harley customer. But the majority would be singing hooky from $78,000-a-year jobs (the norm salary of today’s Harley customer), riding $16,000 motorcycles (the distinctive cost of Harley’s biggest bike, a cruiser), and pledging fealty to an open-road cult with the purpose of doubles as a $4-billion-a-year company.

This is the motorbike earth with the purpose of Harley-Davidson has reinvented, solitary with the purpose of seems–and is–a century unconcerned from the Milwaukee shed somewhere William Harley and Andrew Davidson firstly collaborated in 1903. Harley these days has more to figure out with fraternity than with machinery. You acquisition a Harley, you join a ready-made motorbike gang: The 600 U.S. HOG chapters, operated under the dealers’ aegis. Style is as weighty as tempo. On dealers’ floors, leather-draped mannequins can outnumber the bikes. Harley has artfully parlayed the romance of the road and the independence of the biker to capture baby-boomers. Its central customers control reprised their 1960s defiance with a result with the purpose of bespeaks their 1990s victory.

By advertising a lifestyle while competitors sold plain motorcycles, Harley not here others in the dust in support of leadership in the the majority lucrative segment of the bazaar, the sizeable cruiser bike. It has a 45% share in the U.S., in opposition to. Honda’s 23%. Harley hasn’t built better bikes than its four most important Japanese competitors–it after had persistent quality problems–but it has built a far better brand. It licenses its logo to more than 100 manufacturers, which gives the company everywhere exposure. It fosters the HOG clubs, which are rolling convoys of limitless advertising. So even though it sells a niche result, Harley consistently ranks amongst the ten best-known American brands, in the company of Coca-Cola and Disney.

Harley plus ranks amongst America’s top growth stocks since its 1986 IPO. Its 37% norm yearly profit runs merely behind the 42% pace of any more ’86 debutante: Microsoft. While the interest of so many other companies control deceased into the tank, there’s still heaps of swap gossip in Harley’s. During the firstly partially of 2002 disposable profits rose 27%, to $264 million, on an 18% profit in revenues, to $1.9 billion.

Yet even as Harley is relocation individuals robust results and opening its bicentenary bash, a number of of its fundamental growth engines are sputtering. Its customer ignoble has grayed, as the norm age of a Harley rider has risen from 38 to 46 in the preceding decade. Moreover, customers’ ardor possibly will be cooling along with the cutback. “It’s an upper-middle-class toy,” says Chad Hudson of the Prudent Bear endowment, solitary of a come to of prominent short-sellers convinced with the purpose of Harley will slide. “As group run not at home of disposable profits, that’s available to hurt.”

Plenty of group who promote to and ride motorcycles would savor the comeuppance of Harley, despite all it has complete in support of the industry. When Harley accelerated not at home of nearby economic failure in the mid-1980s, it rejuvenated the unbroken motorbike industry. Following 15 long years of decline, it has without hesitation had 11 straight years of sales growth. Yet old-schoolers still can’t forgive Harley in support of its introduction of yuppie poseurs and high-style duds. To them, it’s a company of fancy-pants bean counters and marketers, with the simply remnant of the old Harley being associate president of styling William G. Davidson, grandson of the co-founder, biker to the central, and acknowledged to all as Willie G.

Willie G. Dismisses the charge with no quite denying it. “There’s a luck of beaners, but they’re not at home on the motorcycles, which is a beautiful phenomenon,” he says, noting with the purpose of he recently co-led a state-run rally of Canadian HOG groups with Harley’s top suit, head of the company Jeff Bleustein. He isn’t exactly of biker horses, being a previous engineering professor next to Yale. But Bleustein made his mark as Harley’s chief engineer, leading an engine redecorate with the purpose of ended chronic problems like grease leaks.

Harley’s appeal still falsehood more in image than in performance, however, and fashion-driven companies are vulnerable to changes of rage and generation. The coming of Harley’s problem is in Gen Xers and Yers, not exactly the strong suit of a company attuned to baby-boomers’ rhythms and standards. Naturally the boomers’ kids wish for to ride something but the old man’s sculpt. They’re drawn to technology with the purpose of are the anti-Harley. American sales of light sport bikes, aimed next to 25- to 34-year-old men, increased 90% from 1998 to 2001. Suzuki, Honda, Yamaha, and Kawasaki control a combined 92% of with the purpose of bazaar. The 114,000 bikes sold in the type still pale beside the 262,000 in Harley’s cruiser segment. But the youth of America control verbal. They have a preference sleeker, sportier technology than the Harley hog, and Harley’s brass had better pay attention.

The company needs to promote to inroads with today’s twentysomething bikers as of the need of thirtysomething ones. The prime age in support of motorbike customers is 35 to 44, according to Donald tan, a consultant to the industry. Tan says this age group’s records began to decline in 1999 and will remain to figure out so through 2016. Since Harley can’t interchange all its boomer customers from a partial pool of busters, it be obliged to stretch to deeper than ahead of into the youth bazaar. The end result, says tan: “It will control to compete more head-on with the Japanese.”

Give Harley character in support of not burying its head in the sand, as the Japanese did what time they were atop the bazaar in the beforehand 1980s. They wrote sour a near-bankrupt Harley, botched to respond to its reappearance, and so therefore ceded to it the boomers and cruisers. That won’t come about next to Harley, vows Bleustein. His message to a state-run business meeting of 650 dealers in July: “The simply phenomenon with the purpose of can bar us is if we persuade complacent. Even though we’ve been flourishing, we can’t be on your feet still.”

To with the purpose of finish, Harley has poured money into increasing contemporary, youth-oriented models. The $17,000 Harley V-Rod–a low-slung, high-powered come to acknowledged formally as a sport performance vehicle and colloquially as a crotch rocket–is inescapable in support of hard-charging youths. Harley has plus tried to operate fresh with the Buell Firebolt ($10,000), its answer to Japanese sport bikes, and the Buell Blast ($4,400), a starter motorbike. But Buell, a subsidiary Harley bought in 1998, has captured merely 2% of the sport-bike bazaar, and Harley will promote to simply 10,000 V-Rods this day. Bleustein insists with the purpose of individuals records aren’t the place: “These aren’t one-shot deals. These are unbroken contemporary platforms from which many models will bloom.”

Making changes is tricky in support of a company with Harley’s cult following: They chance alienating current customers. The V-Rod’s water-cooled engine is a sizeable departure from Harley’s traditional air-cooled solitary, and to a number of uneasy riders a portent of further unwelcome changes to get nearer. “If they perpetually figure out something with with the purpose of [roaring] sound, they’ve lost their customer ignoble,” says B.K. Ellis.

Harley has designed its year-long, ten-city 100th-anniversary bash to appeal to both the old riders it has long fulfilled and the contemporary riders it needs. On the firstly day of the week of Atlanta’s faction, the HOG clubs were to mix and persuade their firstly look next to the anniversary models. On the weekend Harley would invite the free to its Open Road Tour, featuring nation singer Tim McGraw and other draws in support of nonbikers. The company was hopeful in support of each day weekend crowds of 40,000 to 50,000. But it had not at all staged something like this and was with on a unbroken luck of group having a unbroken luck of curiosity approaching Harley–plus a unbroken luck of cash to disburse $55 a ticket.

The group who catch Harley fever will be directed to a place of birth dealer. Many offer Rider’s Edge courses in support of novices. Bleustein began the syllabus two years since as he felt with the purpose of lots of group were interested in motorcycling but anxious by the bikes. About partially the Rider’s Edge graduates are women. Harley’s proportion of woman customers has approaching doubled in the preceding decade, to 9%, partly as the company compulsory dealers to transform their grimy bike shops into retail emporiums. Dealers who reaped the reimbursement of directives like with the purpose of seem convinced with the purpose of the company can keep reinventing itself. “They’ve complete an awful luck to be forward-thinking,” says Chris Houghton of Harley-Davidson in Atlanta.

Yet privately, a number of dealers lose sleep. The customer waiting make a list in support of contemporary motorcycles has shrunk from as much as two years to a problem of months. Dealer premiums with the purpose of used to range flanked by $2,000 and $4,000 control disappeared in support of the majority models. Dealers are appreciative the company is singing the bicentenary to the hilt. But the question, says a dealer, is “What’s available to come about in 2004?” The answer: Harley be obliged to persuade beforehand of the demographic curve with contemporary customers while by hook or by crook keeping faith with its fanatical old ones. If it doesn’t, the born-to-be-wild company will initiate its go along with century with profit growth with the purpose of is doomed to be mild.