{"id":5382,"date":"2019-07-25T05:20:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T12:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=5382"},"modified":"2019-07-25T05:49:45","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T12:49:45","slug":"such-a-deal-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/07\/25\/such-a-deal-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Such a deal!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year was 1991, and the last thing in the world I was thinking about was buying another motorcycle, and within the confines of that thought, the very, very last thought I would have ever had was buying a Harley-Davidson. I had previously owned a \u201979 Electra-Glide I bought new in Texas, and that bike was a beautiful disaster. I called it my optical illusion (it looked like a motorcycle).\u00a0 I wrote about the bad taste it left in an earlier blog<\/a>. Nope, I\u2019d never own another Harley, or so I thought when I sold it in 1981.<\/p>\n

\"\"
My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic, as shown in the 1979 Harley catalog. It was the most unreliable and most beautiful motorcycle I ever owned. I wish I still had it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But like the title of that James Bond movie, you should never say never again. I was a big wheel at an aerospace company in 1991 and I was interviewing engineers when good buddy Dick Scott waltzed in as one of the applicants. I had worked with Dick in another aerospace company (in those days in the So Cal aerospace industry, everybody worked everywhere at one time or another). Dick had the job as soon as he I saw he was applying, but I went through the motions interviewing him and I learned he had a Harley. DIck said they were a lot better than they used to be and he gave me the keys to his \u201989 Electra-Glide. I rode it and he was right. It felt solid and handled way better than my old Shovelhead.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Dick Scott on his ’89 Electra-Glide. The day after I took this photo in Baja, Dick died when he crashed his motorcycle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That set me on a quest. I started looking, and after considering the current slate of Harleys in 1991, I decided that what I needed was a Heritage Softail. I liked the look and I thought I wanted the two-tone turquoise-and-white version. The problem, though, was that none of the Harley dealers had motorcycles. They were all sold before they arrived at the dealers, and the dealers were doing their gouging in those days with a \u201cmarket adjustment\u201d uptick ranging from $2000 to sometimes $4000 (today, most non-Harley dealers sort of do the same thing with freight and setup). There was no way in hell I was going to pay over list price, but even had I wanted to, it would have been a long wait to get a new Harley.<\/p>\n

One day while driving to work, a guy passed me on the freeway riding a sapphire blue Heritage softail, and I was smitten. Those colors worked even better for me than did the turquoise-and-white color combo. The turquoise-and-white had a nice \u201850s nostalgia buzz (it reminded me of a \u201955 Chevy Bel Air), but that sapphire blue number was slick. Even early in the morning on Interstate 10, I could see the orange and gray factory pinstriping, and man, it just worked for me. It had kind of a blue jeans look to it (you know, denim with orange stitching).\u00a0 That was my new want and I wanted the thing bad. But it didn\u2019t make any difference. Nobody had any new Harleys, and nobody had them at list price. I might as well have wanted a date with Michelle Pfeiffer. In those days, a new Harley at list price or less in the colors I wanted (or in any colors, actually) was pure unobtanium.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Harley Softail I bought at Dale’s Modern Harley. I negotiated a hell of a deal. I kept that Harley for 12 years and rode the wheels off the thing.\u00a0 I’ve since learned how to pack a little better.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So one Saturday morning about a month later, I took a drive out to the Harley dealer in San Bernardino. In those days, that dealer was Dale\u2019s Modern Harley (an oxymoronic name for a Harley dealer if ever there was one). Dale\u2019s is no more, but when it was there, it was the last of the real motorcycle shops. You know the drill…it was in a bad part of town, it was small, everything had grease and oil stains, and the only thing \u201cmodern\u201d was the name on the sign. That\u2019s what motorcycle dealers were like when I was growing up. I liked it that way, and truth be told, I miss it.\u00a0 Dealerships are too clean today.<\/p>\n

Anyway, a surprise awaited. I walked in the front door (which was at the rear of the building because the door facing the street was chained shut because, you know, it was a bad part of town).\u00a0 And wow, there it was: A brand new 1992 Heritage Softail in sapphire blue.\u00a0 Just like I wanted.<\/p>\n

Dale\u2019s had a sales guy who came out of Central Casting for old Harley guys. His name was Bob (I never met Dale and I have no idea who he was).\u00a0 Bob.\u00a0 You know the type and if you’re old enough you know the look. Old, a beer belly, a dirty white t-shirt, jeans, engineer boots, a blue denim vest, and one of those boat captain hats motorcycle riders wore in the \u201840s and \u201850s. An unlit cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth. His belt was a chromed motorcycle chain. I\u2019d been to Dale\u2019s several times before, and I\u2019d never seen Bob attired in anything but what I just described. And I\u2019d never seen him without that unlit cigarette.\u00a0 Straight out of Central Casting, like I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d I asked Bob, pointing at the blue Softail.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeal fell through,\u201d Bob answered. \u201cGuy ordered it, we couldn\u2019t get him financing, and he couldn\u2019t get a loan anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s available?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hmmm. This was interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201c$12,995, plus tax and doc fees,\u201d Bob answered, walking back to his desk at the edge of Dale’s very small showroom floor.<\/p>\n

$12,995 was MSRP for a new Heritage Softail back in 1992. That would be a hell of a deal. Nobody else in So Cal was selling Harleys at list price.<\/p>\n

I followed Bob to his desk and sat down.\u00a0 I was facing Bob and the Harley was behind me. Bob was screwing around with some papers on his desk and not paying any particular attention to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll go $11,500 for it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

Bob looked up from his paperwork and smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cSon,\u201d he said (and yeah, he actually called me “son,” even though I was 40 years old at the time) \u201cI\u2019m going to sell that motorsickle this morning.\u00a0 Not this afternoon, not next week, but this morning.\u00a0 The only question is: Am I going to sell it to you or am I going to sell it to him?\u201d<\/p>\n

Bob actually said \u201cmotorsickle,\u201d I thought, and then I wondered who \u201chim\u201d was. Bob sensed my befuddlement.\u00a0 He pointed behind me and I looked. Somebody was already sitting on what I had started regarding as my motorsickle.\u00a0 That guy was thinking the same thing I was.<\/p>\n

\u201cBob,\u201d I began, \u201cyou gotta help me out here. I never paid retail for anything in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s because you never bought a new \u201992 Harley, son, but I\u2019ll tell you what. I\u2019ll throw in a free Harley T-shirt.\u201d\u00a0 I couldn’t tell if he was joking or if he was trying to insult me, but I didn’t care.<\/p>\n

I looked at the Harley again and that other dude was still sitting on it. \u00a0 On my motorcycle. \u00a0 And that\u2019s when I made up my mind. $12,995 later (plus another thousand dollars in taxes and doc fees) I rolled out of Dale\u2019s with a brand-new sapphire blue Harley Heritage Softail. And one new Harley T-shirt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The year was 1991, and the last thing in the world I was thinking about was buying another motorcycle, and within the confines of that thought, the very, very last thought I would have ever had was buying a Harley-Davidson. I had previously owned a \u201979 Electra-Glide I bought new in Texas, and that bike … Continue reading “Such a deal!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[235,392,63,232,452,103,89],"tags":[816,814,815],"class_list":["post-5382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-back-in-the-day","category-baja","category-dream-bike","category-harley","category-harley-davidson","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-1992-harley-heritage-softail","tag-dales-modern-harley","tag-san-bernardino-harley"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5382"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5399,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382\/revisions\/5399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}