You are correct. This very entertaining 11 minute video from Fortnine (still one of the best channels on YouTube) does a great job explaining exactly how HD wound up where they are today: https://youtu.be/EOwxxsPaogY

Sounds kind of like Leica to me: orthodontists running around Africa or Asia pretending to be Steve McCurry with $11,000 'Safari' cameras destroyed the brand for me. Yeah, sure, the company is still technically alive, but at what cost?

(and lest you think I'm joking: https://www.dpreview.com/news/9864312105/leica-releases-limi...)

Are the cameras not good anymore? Or is it that the “wrong people“ are using their products that bothers you? If it is the latter, then you are just trying to buy an identity through brands, and you are as much part of the problem.

Leica glass is still top notch. GP is just making some weird status thing out of it.

Then just buy the M43 version?

I prefer the APS-C version.

Leica glass is great. Leica cameras are great. I wish the company would focus on turning out high quality products that are meant to be used to create photographs, as opposed to turning out the camera equivalent of a Birkin bag.

And I say this as someone who has previously owned and shot with a Leica M6 and currently owns and shoots with a Leica IIIf.

The only good thing about Leica cameras is the handling, arguably and subjectively. They are behind in every single other respect. Leica lenses are good, though.

Couple being sub-par with being much more expensive and you get something that is moreso useful for image than as a tool.

The same thing is true of guitar manufacturers and probably most other manufacturers of music gear.

The only upside with the rediculious "Live to Ride", or whatever rediculious marketing slogans they use is most used Harley's are bringing 1/2 of what they were in the nineties.

And it's a buyers market.

>Actually, they kept the brand alive by buying the product. >Without those people they'd have died long ago.

I disagree, the Company was founded in 1903 and was did well into the 90's and then the 50 plus crowd decided to be some kind of poser biker gang type and destroyed the brand. Not very different than what happened to the Corvette and all the 6o plus folks buying them the last 20 years.

Wrong, the brand hung on and is dying out with boomers. Everyone knows that the younger kids get crotch rockets. It wasn’t the hold people that ruined the brand, it was the brand marketing to Boomers for shortsighted gains. Harleys are for Boomers. Harley made sure that was the message. Now they pay for it.

charging 30k for a motorcycle didn't help

Made all the worse than the 30k motorcycle is slower and handles worse than a 13k motorcycle.

Not to mention breaking down constantly.

What did these people do to the brand image? I guess I don't understand what it was like before this happened.

Harley's were synonymous with Motorcycle Gangs (Ex: Hells Angels, etc) or with young cool men (18+).

All of a sudden in the 90's a lot of these 40-60 year olds started to try and recapture their youth or that coolness they never had. They started buying Harley's and dressing in Leather and making these ridiculous club patches and driving around revving their motorcycles everywhere. It was so cringe that you actually felt ashamed for them.

Here is a good clip from South Park that kind of sums it all up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGyKBFCd_u4

They installed a CEO who didn't know how to ride a motorcycle but he could make tshirts move off the shelves.

Producing crappy, noisy, stupidly big, and overpriced products is what destroyed the brand.