Originally Posted by
Scott
Unfortunately, even if they now own a great design for a great middle-weight bike, that's only the first step. It takes a lot of money and effort to design and test the prototypes, have all the tooling created for manufacturing, test the parts and assembled components, obtain EPA and DOT certifications etc. etc. etc.
So I just can't imagine them making a completely new design any time soon. They either need to get some solid cash-flow from the sales of their 1190 bikes, or they need a big investor willing to put up a lot of cash (probably something in the ballpark of $50 million minimum). And even if they could start cranking out a lower-price higher volume middle-weight next week, they only have 16 dealers. They can't hope to sell the number of bikes they'd need to justify all that investment with the dealer network they currently have.
I hate to be Debbie Downer, but for those reasons, I highly doubt a true, unique middle-weight is coming any time soon.
I think we're much more likely to get a less expensive, shorter stroke 900 cc variation of the current bikes - but even something like that could be very cool if done right and help get them to where they need to be to start making new designs.