OK couple of things that I have learned along the way.
Looks to me as though America has totally lost the sport bike market to the same folks we once tried to vaporize.[/Quote]
I know you didn't mean anything bad by this, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deterrants more than anything else. The Japanese ground fighters were boarderline phochotic by our modern standards. they had a society steeped in militant history where people to this day actively train in combat. The Japanese are capable of being both peaceful and ruthless at the same time. They say the war chrimes that were perpetrated by individual Japanese soldiers in China rivald some of the most horrendous acts in history.
I had to do a report when I was in college on quality methods (Aviation major where consistency and quality are the highest ideals.) I read about this guy W.Edwards Deming who was the reason that the Japanese are as good as they are now. Basically, in the post WWII eras Japan was not an industrial nation. They were still dealing with a lot of internal issues between the old and the new ways of manufacturing, and having miltiple nucler weapons detonated in your country tends to mess up your economy and national morale pretty badly. This guy came in and fixed all that. When people talk about "Jap crap" they weren't kidding. Remember the Kia Rio and how bad Koreas' quality name was a few years ago? Think the same thing in Japan in the 50's.
As we all know now, in todays society the modern Japan is much different, but it's been just over 50 years since they fixed that problem. They weren't always the best at making technology, but they were always really good about being flexible. Personally, I think it has to do with the mindset of the Japanese. Their culture is very accepting of just about anything incorporated into it at this point. Which is why you see so many religions over there that comingle with less issue. It just isn't really a big deal to them, and maybe that's just a bad example.
The problem with American manufacturing is multi-fold. If you look at the corporate structure, any year that you don't have a profit made is a year that the corporate entity isn't performing up to it's legal mandates (it's promise to the shareholders). This creates avery "play not to lose" mentality.
In addition to this you have the big three's mentality that people will just buy from them no matter what. And on some level, it's true. Just look at all the Ford loyal people out there who will by their craptacular jukers and pay far too much. Or a more relavant example would be Harley-Davidson, which you can look at two ways... they either don't want to pay to keep up, or they are holding on to a culture that works. Either one and both may be true at the same time.
Finally (even though there is a lot more), you have to keep in mind that R&D, especially into an undeveloped market is exceedingly expensive. Tooling machines is not cheap and designers don't have big houses by accident. R&D on anything, but particularly on automobiles is exceedingly expensive. It's cheaper to go into litigation and fight to keep rights than it is to go into R&D and make new things (or fix EPA standards, which is a personal pet peeve of mine).
And then lets be honest. The Sportbike market is damn near perfect. Seriously. If you can think of a better way to pack frame, engine, drivetrain, and a seat into a bike and make it lighter, pass EPA, and safety requirements, and still have it rev to 15k while allowing it to tear through a corner. Let me know. I want the finders fee for putting someone in touch with the big manufacturers. So if I was a company like Harley. Why should I even bother? The market is closed and I am 20 years behind.
