Oops....buggared up those pic's again....must be seein double
I work in an industry where there are alot of Slippery Flim Flam operators that couldn't find their bum with their hands let alone import a bike . When it goes wrong they just stop answering the phone & emails and the client is left thinking their bike has vanished into fat air . When people call me it's often to just vent about how someone else has dudded them so I use their loss to help make my business better . I take notes of what went wrong , how it could have happened and then work out how it could have been avoided . These sort of things have made me tweek my methods , it makes you tighten up your processes & constantly re-assess how you can do it better .
Yeah Wayne.....I thought I'd read that before....had ta look again thinking it was you
' Grey imports 1HD V Aussie 5HD "
I can quite clearly see both sides of the fence here.
On one hand , I can't get a decent offer on my one owner "Aussie 5HD" 2008 FXSTC Softail Custom ( mint bike !) due to the flooding of the Perth market with with "grey import 1HD's". That's the market from here on in , and luckily i don't HAVE to sell this bike , ( I'd be forked if I did !!)
Lots and lots of those Yank imports are well rough , but still have had a huge detrimental affect on the residual price of " Aussie from new " bikes !
On the other hand I also have a 2008 FXSTSSE2 CVO Softail Springer , a "1HD" out of Texas , one owner mint bike ( like new actually !)
Now I would / could NEVER have bought that bike new here in 2008 at $58 K as an "Aussie 5HD" ( Frasers Perth only ever sold 2 FFsake !!)
So for me at least , the grey import scenario has been a double edged sword , both obvious good and bad points , and has changed the used HD scene in Australia for ever.
I for one will NEVER buy a new HD in Australia again , and I've bought many over the last 18 years. Why would you ?
There's a bloke that has a shop close by that inports HD bikes sell them cheap an a shit load of them but seriousley if most people had seen what these bikes looked liked when they got off the boat before the dealer cleaned them up you would haft to be crazy to buy one they buy the cheapest pieces of shit an service then give it a cut an polish an dump it on the show room floor an hope some poor bloke that dosn't know too much about the bikes comes along, personally i was almost going that way then i thought i must have rocks in my head to buy one when it might be cheaper then the blokes around the corner but what it dosnt cost you up front it will later down the track!!
When I imported my bike she had 380 miles and the bike was like new. It took a while to find a nice one and trust the seller. That was 2 and half years ago and still over the moon with my bike. One reason that I imported was the Aussie harleys were to much then, this was before the prize drop. I saved close to 6 grand and was not interesed in a metric cruiser. There are lots of good buys here and over there and the best think we are free do to what we want.
the bike I am looking at are 440k here, in the States they are $20 to 25K including compliance/ADR so I might buy two, sell one and have a very inexpensive bike
Good luck with that , but I think " it's been done already" mate .
A "private" importer here in Perth brought 3 CVO's in, sold the first over a year ago for "good profit " ( made 10K he reckons !) .
Sold the second after 6 months and only just got his money back.
Still has the 3rd and it's going nowhere fast and it's now a full 16 months older than when he started !
Some of the "grey imports" for retail sale in the eastern states have been so for a full calendar year now as well
So be careful of that thought mate , I looked long and hard into it and decided agin' it .
PS What bike is 44K here and 20 to 25 over there ? Sounds like a CVO Breakout and they're NOT 20 K over there !!
You might be one of the lucky one's i bet theres alot of blokes out there with broken harts that have been scammed by importers ive personaly seen some off these bike when they have arrived to the work shop straight from the states in such bad condition an then looking half decent with a clean up an maybe some paint but if some ones not looking after the duco of the bike it dosnt say much for the running gear an as for being insured for 26k i bought a bike recently for $12,250 thats insured with shannons for 25k bought here in Australia so it is possible to find good bikes here with service history ect, for a good price you just have to find the right person!!
.....................You get what you pay for thats what my Father told me an thats what his father told him, importer's are there to make money not friends's.............
