Sixty-six years of buying what it could build. Ground Truth No. 03, the LinkedIn series in full: four parts, in the order the brief reads, the record, the same sentence, too small to say, the Sprint and the final word. Every figure is drawn from an SEC filing, a company release or a full call transcript, except where marked. The complete brief, with each source linked to the document, is here.
Contact Patch Advisory · William Weppner · September 2026
Sixty-six years of Harley-Davidson buying what it could build. Aermacchi, Buell, MV Agusta, Alta, StaCyc, Hero, KYMCO, Dust. What it paid, what it got, what it was for.
Sixty-six years of buying what it could build, from the filings. Every figure links to its document in the full brief.
The first new motorcycle under that plan is the Sprint. Its engine is a 440cc single Hero MotoCorp builds in Rajasthan for a ₹2.29 lakh motorcycle.
Same call: “we’re finalizing the specific production plans.”
That is not new. It is the sixty-sixth year of it.
So I went back through the record, the filed one rather than the press one, for every time Harley-Davidson went outside for a product. What did it pay? What did it get? How did it end?
| Year | Bought / licensed | Cost, as filed | How it ended |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Aermacchi | ~$250K | Sold 1978 |
| 1986 | Holiday Rambler | ~$155M | Sold 1996 |
| 1993 | Eaglemark → HDFS | $55M | Kept |
| 1993 | Buell | ~$500K | Shut 2009 · ~$125M |
| 2008 | MV Agusta | $105.1M | Sold for €1 · $268M lost |
| 2018 | Alta Motors | n/d | Gone in 6 months |
| 2019 | StaCyc | $14.9M | Kept · 21,633 units |
| 2019–20 | Qianjiang · Hero (licences) | n/d | Kept |
| 2021 | LiveWire SPAC | $100M | 2027? |
| 2026 | Dust · KYMCO Honcho | $375K cash | Via LiveWire |
Full table, with the in-house programs and every source linked, in §01 of the brief.
$ millions. MV Agusta is the filed net loss from discontinued operations. Buell and India are the company’s own estimates, never reconciled. LiveWire is the consolidated loss since the spin.
Alta is missing because there is no number to put on it.
The $14.9M acquisition outsells the $1.77B one thirty-three to one.
Harley builds when the product carries the full brand at the full price. Everything below the big twin (a small bike, a balance bike, a battery, a loan book) gets bought, licensed or partnered. Kept when it feeds the dealer. Dropped when it competes with the badge.
Read the whole record with that sentence in hand and it stops looking like a series of mistakes.
Buell and MV Agusta. $125 million and $268 million. What the two biggest purchases cost, from the 10-Ks and the sale agreement, and the words used both times.
Full brief, every source linked:
contactpatchadvisory.com/groundtruth/03/
Buell and MV Agusta. What the two biggest outside purchases cost, from the filings, and the words used to end both.
Sixty-six years of buying what it could build, from the filings. Every figure links to its document in the full brief.
~$70M incentives, inventory and operating costs. ~$14M fixed assets. ~$9M severance. ~$32M contracts. The realized total was never reported on its own.
Erik Buell, eighteen months later: “They didn’t shut down Buell because they were mean.” He was right. They shut it because it was a second brand in a building with room for one.
Jim Ziemer, announcing it: “Motorcycles are the heart, soul and passion of Harley-Davidson, Buell and MV Agusta.” He retired nine months later.
Loss from discontinued operations, net of tax: $29.5M (2008) + $125.8M (2009) + $113.1M (2010). 2.55 times the purchase price, or $11.2M for every month Harley owned it. A $51.0M tax reversal in 2011 nets it to $217.4M.
“€1” is the share price. “€3” is the press adding three nominal payments. “€2” counts only the euros.
The 10-K reports “an immaterial loss on the date of sale.” Also true. By August 2010 there was nothing left to lose.
The words repeat because the decision does. A second brand that competes with Harley-Davidson for engineering dollars does not survive the next CEO.
It lost 2.55 times the purchase price in twenty-four months and handed the factory back to the family it bought it from. The same Castiglionis took Aermacchi off Harley’s hands in 1978.
The company learned the lesson. Every outside move since has been sized to be forgettable.
Next: the two that were too small to disclose.
Alta Motors: one sentence, no number, bounded by Alta’s own Form D. StaCyc: $14.9 million, and it outsells LiveWire 33 to 1.
Full brief, every source linked:
contactpatchadvisory.com/groundtruth/03/
Alta Motors, which Harley never put a number on. StaCyc, the one purchase that hit every target it was given. Together, what Harley actually wanted from electric.
Sixty-six years of buying what it could build, from the filings. Every figure links to its document in the full brief.
No amount. No percentage. The Q1 2018 earnings release is the only Harley-Davidson SEC filing that has ever contained the word “Alta.” One sentence: “Invested in a collaborative agreement with Alta Motors.”
“Investment (loss) income” ran at about +$1M a quarter and went negative the two quarters after Alta. No filing attributes the swing. Inferred, not documented.
| Filed | Offering | Sold | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Mar 2016 | $7.0M convertible notes | $1.77M | 18 |
| 2 Jun 2017 | $26.1M equity | $12.4M | 42 |
| 3 Jul 2017 | $20.3M equity + debt | $15.2M | 24 |
| 5 Feb 2018 | Same round, closed | $20.84M | 30 |
| 13 Aug 2018 | $5.0M bridge note | $2.45M | 4 |
The round Harley joined closed by amendment on 2 February 2018, four weeks before the announcement. Since July it had grown by $5.65M and six investors. No Form D reports an equity sale after that.
If Harley’s money is in that round, the check was inside $5.65M. Inferred. Harley has never said.
Harley wanted the technology without the partner. It paid a sum too small to disclose to find out what it needed, opened its own lab a week after the split leaked, and built the rest in-house.
Six months. One press release. No number. That is what a cheap option looks like from the outside.
Alta’s co-founder has his own account of what Harley took with it. It is in the brief, on the record, unverified, with a disclosure.
Harley’s filing never explains the other $7.9M. LiveWire’s carve-out statements do. StaCyc hit every volume target it was given.
Not electrification. The next customer.
Revenue: $6.1M motorcycles, $19.6M StaCyc, 76% of LiveWire’s product revenue, from a $14.9M purchase of a company that makes $649 balance bikes for three-year-olds.
$55M for the business that became HDFS, made $248M in 2024, and that KKR and PIMCO paid 1.75× book for a tenth of in 2025.
The two outside purchases that were kept and made money are the two that make money on somebody else’s product on a Harley dealer’s floor. Neither has ever been asked to build a motorcycle.
1960: an Aermacchi. 2026: a Hero. The same hole below the big twin, and somebody else’s engine in it both times. Seven CEOs, one cycle, and what every purchase was for.
Full brief, every source linked:
contactpatchadvisory.com/groundtruth/03/
What Harley builds, what it buys, and the rule that falls out. Then the two motorcycles that will test it, and the one thing every purchase was for.
Sixty-six years of buying what it could build, from the filings. Every figure links to its document in the full brief.
The one time it built its own small bike in its own plants, it lost money, closed the plant, and licensed the segment to the partner who could build the engine for ₹2.29 lakh.
1960: Harley bought half of the Varese motorcycle division, for about a quarter of a million dollars by the accounts that survive, because the 125cc Hummer left a gap between it and the big twins that Japan was about to fill.
It sold the Sprint for fourteen years, won three 250cc world titles with Walter Villa, and in 1978 sold the factory to the Castiglionis. The same family it bought MV Agusta from thirty years later, and sold it back to for a euro.
The rule held. The plan’s “existing platforms” include one that belongs to a licensee in Rajasthan.
It is not a $6,000 motorcycle at a York cost base, and the Street’s history says what happens next.
The company has been trying to fill the space below the big twin with somebody else’s motorcycle since Eisenhower. It has never once filled it with its own.
Air-cooled, ~$10,000, York, per trade reporting. The first air-cooled twin program since the Evolution. A Sportster built in York that makes money at $10,000 would be the first time since 1960 that Harley filled the hole with its own motorcycle.
| CEO | Tenure | Bought or started | Sold, shut or reversed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bleustein | 1997–2005 | Buell to ~100% | none |
| Ziemer | 2005–09 | MV Agusta | none |
| Wandell | 2009–15 | none | Buell · MV Agusta |
| Levatich | 2015–20 | Alta · StaCyc · QJ · Thailand | Alta |
| Zeitz | 2020–25 | Hero · LiveWire SPAC · HDFS sale | India · Street · Sportster |
| Starrs | 2025– | Sprint · 883 · Dust | Rev Max home · “Electric” |
Buell lasted eleven months into a new CEO. MV lasted fourteen. LiveWire is eleven months into Starrs, with the sentence already said, cash to about May 2027, and $75M due to the parent that December.
StaCyc: a dealer-traffic product with a margin and five years of hitting volume targets. Dust: an option on off-road electric that cost $375,000 in cash. The Alta structure, done inside a subsidiary this time.
If LiveWire is sold, merged or wound down, watch whether those two come back into the motor company. That would be the tell.
The Milwaukee-Eight and the Rev Max got built because a $25,000 motorcycle pays for an engine program. A 440 single, a balance bike, a battery and a loan book do not, and every one was bought, licensed or partnered. Kept when it feeds the dealer, dropped when it competes with the badge.
StaCyc is the one part of the electric decade Harley has never had to write down. It is the one that was never an electric motorcycle.
Which of those is the Sprint?
Full brief, every source linked, corrections log, open items:
contactpatchadvisory.com/groundtruth/03/
Sixty-six years of buying what it could build, from the filings. Every figure links to its document in the full brief.