[olhogrider]

Victory has a business model that is working.

 I wish they (or any US bike maker) produced a 500cc single.

Harley did, it was called the Buel Blast. A failure in marketing.

My daughter would have been the ideal demographic for the Blast but she found it butt ugly. The last one produced was turned into a table by Erik Buell.

[kauai1800]

I had a Blast and it was a great bike. Learned to ride on it and put about 3,000 miles on it...
Really good forum full of helpful people. With a little attention you could make it into a reliable, nicely-handling thumper. Buell's engineering put a lot of cool little things into the bike that you wouldn't expect like awesome brakes, oil-in-frame, belt drive, etc. If you look, you'll often see them for sale cheap and running poorly; at least 50% of these bikes only need a $12 intake "boot" to run perfectly again, so watch Craigslist for one at $900-1200 range and you'll be stoked.

The reason Erik Buell hated them was he was basically forced by Harley to make the Blast for their Riders Edge course; he had little say in their production, but they "stole" lots of his design from the nicer bikes. He considered Buell to be like what AMG is to MB or what Ruf is to Porsche.

[1Blackwolf1]

  I really like my vic as a highway bike.  Heavy enough not to be blown out from under me on the freeway and enough power to get me out of harms way.  And with a little tweaking here and there right at 98 horsies at the rear wheel.  Total investment so far is less than 4k.  Of course it was a very low mileage repo, (1st owner never got a chance to whip it before going to prison for 8 to 12).  I'm just not to much for the Vision, Arlen Ness went a wee-bit far on the design..yuck.

[prof_stack]

Victory has a business model that is working.
I wish they (or any US bike maker) produced a 500cc single.
Harley did, it was called the Buell Blast. A failure in marketing.

I too had a Blast and put 10k miles on it.  It was a great bike that was far more trustworthy than my C5, got equal gas mileage, 40% more power, and butt ugly compared to my C5.    

I always hoped HD would put that lump into a standard/cruiser frame.

[Chiefharlock]

Well, y'know... if we ALL spread the word about RE way more than we really need to and start really building the popularity over here...  I mean, all the Harley guys I talk to thin the bike is absolutely awesome and ask all sorts of questions.  Maybe we can find a couple of converts....  I mean I know I tell everyone who asks me about it where to go to get one locally and about this website...  So maybe if we give the builders over here a healthy bit of competition we'll see them change things up a little...