Iconic American Brand Struggles, Shuttering Dealerships In CA

Several factors, including an unfriendly post-pandemic economy, have led to a wave of dealership closures for iconic American motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson, including its flagship 110-year-old California location, according to reports.

The Milwaukee-based company’s unit sales are down 45 percent over the last decade and sales dropped 5 percent nationally in the third quarter of 2025, Inc. reported, noting there are more than 650 dealerships in operation across the country.

"I'm a dealer, and I hate to admit this, but there are too many dealers for the number of new vehicles that are being sold today," George Gatto, chairman of the Harley-Davidson Dealer Council for the National Powersport Dealers Association, told Common Tread, which is motorcycle website RevZilla’s blog.

Harley-Davidson sold about 344,000 motorcycles during its 2006 peak but just over 151,000 in 2024, according to Common Tread.

Gatto told the blog that in recent years, following the coronavirus pandemic, "especially once the interest rates went up, was when all hell broke loose and sales fell off a cliff. There was too much inventory and manufacturers were pushing dealers to take it.”

The company’s shift to e-commerce has also been a challenge for dealers, Gatto told Common Tread, which noted Harley-Davidson management declined to comment for its story about the closures.

Dealerships have shuttered across the country in the past two years, including in California, Illinois, New York, Florida, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming and Pennsylvania, TheStreet reported, citing local news and industry media.

A Harley-Davidson dealership on San Francisco's Mission Street that had been in business for 110 years abruptly closed last year, according to KRON, which reported the closure in June of 2024, noting that the location was started in 1914 by Dudley Perkins Sr., was at one point the brand's longest-running family-owned dealership and was among the oldest brands in the city.

This year, tariffs have had an impact on the company, costing it $27 million in the third quarter of 2025, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"There is little evidence that a recovery for motorcycle demand is in the cards any time soon,” Morningstar analyst Jamie Katz wrote of the company’s recent earnings, the Journal Sentinel reported. “After multiple years of inventory reduction at dealers, the firm has yet to find equilibrium and has signaled further unit reductions to protect dealer profitability.”

Harley-Davidson has plans to introduce its Sprint model in 2026, which is priced at about $6,000 and targets younger riders, according to the newspaper.