Quote:
Originally Posted by chassis
Carolwood LP is now the private equity owner of Indian. Carolwood has a number of portfolio companies that have nothing to do with motorcycles, vehicles or industrial machinery. To them it's just business. Strip Indian expenses down, engineer cost out of the product, shut off capital investment, reduce the workforce with emphasis on white collar reductions, and try to make a go of it. Private equity 101 for a manufacturing investment.
If Indian doesn't work out for Carolwood, they will sell what remains of the company, which is usually the brand (trademarks) and intellectual property (engineering drawings). Factories and real estate often get sold-leased back shortly after an ownership change to generate liquidity (cash), so post-Polaris, fixed assets like these would likely be worth close to zero.
Production machinery is not special in most industries and much of the componentry is outsourced to third parties anyway. Car, truck and motorcycle companies are simply bolting bits together and putting a few decals on. Frame welding and painting is kindergarten-level technology and anyone can do it, and can be outsourced.
A new buyer, likely Asian, will buy it and pump in new capital investment and the story continues.
Separately - what a poor strategy and marketing decision of Polaris to engage in the waste of shareholder resources to support two overlapping motorcycle brands. Especially when they did one "the hard [expensive] way" which was the ground-up genesis of Victory. I have some special knowledge of PII and it is not flattering from a business point of view.
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Exactly my point. In a consolidating market Polaris obviously sees Indian not surviving, so it sold off the company to get out. For a PE company there is no pride of brand equity, just business (i.e. profit). When the profits stop, the company goes away. I don't see an Asian buyer since why would they be interested in an American-made motorcycle. If they take the brand to Asia, the American market (buyer) for it collapses.
Toast.
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."