Throttle Down: Navigating the KTM Controversy and Recent Industry Dynamics

In this episode of the Throttle Stop Modo Podcast, host Justin Bethune, along with co-hosts Jeff Griffith and Matt Welch, dives deep into the current landscape of the motorcycle industry, focusing primarily on the KTM issues and the challenges it faces. They discuss the recent media scrutiny surrounding KTM's production decisions, their transparency, and the impact of social media on public perception. Join the hosts as they also share updates from the shop, recount their recent adventure riding experiences, and take a closer look at motorcycle sales trends and manufacturer expectations in a post-COVID world. From new bike arrivals like the Bentley de-oval to upcoming ride events, this episode encapsulates the latest in the motorcycle industry news and provides insights into motorcycle maintenance. Get ready for a lively conversation about the world of motorcycles with your favorite motorbike brands!

https://www.pandorasmotorsports.com/

Transcript

Welcome to Throttle Stop Modo Podcast.



 I am your host, Justin Bethune, and with me we have our other hosts.

 Jeff Griffith.

 Matt Welch. How you doing, guys? Good. You? Doing great. Doing great. Y'all are wearing your team uniforms today. That's right.

 Well, that makes sense.

 Looking good. Yeah, based on what we're going to be talking about today.

 It's like we were going to talk about that.

 Exactly. It's almost like we planned it ahead of time.

 Rarely does that ever happen.

 Exactly.



 So how was this week before we jump into the topics? Anything interesting happen at the store?

 It was good. I mean, it's odd right now. Sales are a little off. I think they're off everywhere. Yeah.



 We did get the de-oval, the Bentley de-oval in. That was cool. That is cool. We should have brought pictures of it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, check out the website. It's on the website for sale now, isn't it?

 I haven't put it on the website for sale. I wouldn't show where that conversation had gone.

 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 Is that the brand new one? It's a neat bike, yeah. Nice.

 They took the de-oval and they partnered with Bentley and they came up with a lot of custom parts to put on the bike. A lot of carbon fiber, the Bentley logo, and all in all, they raised the MSRP to $70,000.

 Does that have a massaging seat? No, it does come with a helmet and a jacket.

 It does come with four seats though, so maybe when I'm massaging, we just missed it. It does. It does have four seats, yeah. I don't know why it came with so many seats.

 Yeah. $70,000 for a...

 De-oval.

 Did they do anything performance-wise?

 No.

 It's got a one-off exhaust on it, but I mean, it's still a one-off exhaust.

 It's a beast of a bike anyways. Yeah, they're great bikes. How much is that thing making? $1.85? $1.85? Oh, okay.

 I want to say $170,000.

 I don't know why. It made them once heavy, yeah. I don't know why.

 I think that's what it is on the multi.

 On them with the exhaust, they probably had to do a tune and stuff on it.

 No, it's a homologated exhaust. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a BPA exhaust. All right. Yeah.

 They couldn't change all that too much without having a real headache and making it a lot more expensive.

 Right. Yeah. Well, I'll have to come check that out. Yeah. Come on. Yeah.

 There's a reel of that on our Instagram, if anyone wants to check that out, just a little unboxing video.

 Thanks. Oh. Then this past weekend,



 y'all had a ride, right? Did that all go through?

 That did not work. Okay.



 We get bad weather coming into it. That usually scares off some motorcyclists.



 They still had the music at the mansion though. Matt went to that.

 Yeah. Carl and myself went down there and hung out for a while and had a tent and some motorcycles and talked to a lot of people. It was a good turnout considering the weather. I think we had like 60, 70, 80% chance of rain throughout most of the day and it didn't really rain at all.

 No.

 It didn't.

 No. And then yesterday it wasn't supposed to rain. And it did rain all day.

 But I went to road mountain bikes last night. It was hero dirt. So, yeah. It was really good.

 Nice. Hero dirt?

 Hero dirt.

 Is that a technical term? It is.

 It is.

 I've never heard that in my life.

 It's like they just watered the track for you.

 Yeah. I don't like that.

 I've never heard that term, but I knew exactly what he meant.



 He said he was going to be in the race last night. Good.

 Awesome. And then this weekend we have the adventure ride. Adventure ride

 with the Alabama group.

 So by the time you see this it will already be over. Right. But we'll have some footage of that coming out. So what are the details on that one?

 So yeah, like you said, it's going to be over by the time this airs. But yeah, I mean we're going to meet in Reliance early Saturday morning. They've got a route planned through, I'm assuming, I don't know, but I'm assuming across Star Mountain known Oswald Road. I don't know if anybody's been there.

 I probably have, but I wouldn't have called it any of that.

 So Oswald Road runs from 30 to what is that recreational area on top? Joe Howie. Recreational area.

 Yeah, I've been to Long Beach, Joe Howie.

 And then, you know, jump back on payment and come back to the shop and have lunch.

 Probably find the lost city of McFarland along the way.

 No, I don't think we'll go that way. Not based on the timeframe that we've got.



 I'm not sure of their route. I've left that up to them and I'm just along for the ride and probably going to run sweet and make sure anybody falls down, we pick them back up and put them on their motorcycle.



 Sure it'll be me. I'm a little nervous about it.

 Well, yeah, that will have already happened by the time this airs. So it would be great.

 Maybe I should go behind you and then see you can radio back and be like, "Eh, you might want to go ahead and hop back on the highway."



 So let's go ahead and talk about the next ride. Do y'all have the next one planned? We do not have the next one planned.

 But do you know what the date is going to be? It will be the third weekend of October. October, right? I guess technically the next big thing that we're doing is going to be the ride to camp, which is October 26th. That's what we need to talk about. And really looking forward to that.



 We will leave the shop on Saturday morning.



 And I'm still working on the destination, but it'll just be a ride to camp. We'll camp overnight, Saturday night, get up Sunday morning. Everybody goes their respective ways, but we'll run the van with everybody's gear if they need to, need us to. If they want to ride their 500 and don't have bags, enough bags to carry camping gear or whatever, we'll run the van to where we end up camping and facilitate that for people So yeah.

 Yeah, that's really nice not having to carry all that with you and still being able to enjoy the ride, especially if you're planning on doing any off-road along the way. So you can already have that weight off of you without having to make camp first.

 Yeah.



 Cool. So that's the one that we need to talk about. Because this will be airing October...



 What's two weeks from tomorrow?

 I don't know.

 It's the first week of October, so that'll give us about two and a half weeks before the ride.

 October 2nd.

 Okay.

 So three and a half weeks.



 It'll be October 3rd.

 Perfect.



 Yeah.

 So October 26th. 6th. October 26th. Yes. Check the website. Pandora's... European Motorsports.com.

 Dot com. Speaking of websites. Pandora's Motorsports.com. Pandora's Motorsports.com. Sorry. Speaking of websites, Jeff did a great job. He handled the new website. Go check it out. It looks great.

 I already did. I've already spotted a couple of bucks and I want them out.



 I was looking at the inventory the other night.

 It's hard getting all the inventory on there. So all the inventory's on there and everything's pretty accurate. He's already pointed out some things that aren't completely accurate. But now there's no images of them other than the stock photo. So I'm going to have to go through and take pictures of all the bikes again and there's 400 and something. So that's going to be my job for the next foreseeable future, really.

 The goal would be to get the bikes sold before you can get the pictures up.

 And that's happened a lot and I'm really thankful for that.

 As you're posting the pictures, you see somebody wheeling it out the door.

 By that point I've already taken the pictures. I'm mad about it.



 You could have sold the other white one.

 Yeah.



 Yeah, I'm sure that happens all the time.

 It's fine. I'd rather it happened that way. I'm happy to have that accident. I like solar motorcycles.

 That's the whole point, right?



 We didn't start a museum. Yeah, exactly.

 Even though you've got some museum quality bikes in there. We do have some nice stuff.

 Yeah.

 We've got a lot of them. We've got some really cool stuff to check out. We already talked about the Bentley. We also have right next to that Bentley the Massano paint job bike that was signed by Benyaya himself, Peko Benyaya. And it's modeled after the bike he rode at Massano. But it's basically if you took a Panagoli V4 and you made it an R without going down on CC and then you had all the cool bling to it, that's what that bike is.

 I thought your dad was going to buy it.

 Oh, no.



 He's a fanboy, but he does like his money.



 He wants to hold on to some of it so that he can continue his retirement, not have to come out of it.

 Speaking of Panagoli RS, I think there's four of them at the shop right now. Yeah, that's the real thing. We've got one for sale. And then I think we've got two or three. I think three customers bikes that are there for accessories and upgrades and service.

 What are the odds?

 It's not even that common. No, they're not common at all. But I mean, we have had good luck with selling them, but yeah, four of them at the shop, four of them at any place at one time is... Yeah.

 Yeah. We got one of them with the Undertale Race Exhaust.



 I've got my on the 950S Super Sport.



 Yeah, that's a great bike. We were just talking about that with the customer yesterday.

 With Cooper?

 Nuka? Yeah, that's who it was.

 Yeah. I haven't ridden one yet. Welcome, Cooper. I'll have to check it out because they sound like they're a little more comfortable.

 Yeah, for sure.



 You had your old CBR F4i.

 Yeah, it's out here in the low.

 So, if you want that but modern and Ducati... Exactly. That's what it is.

 It's about the same amount of power, about similar weight. It's a little heavier than the CBR. Is it? Yeah. The CBR is like 390. Okay. Yeah. I'll have to look that up. It's like mid-fours. Yeah, no rotter aids, no anything on the CBR.

 Yeah, I don't think that bike has ABS on it. I remember whenever they were coming out with ABS on bikes, particularly the Honda's and things like that, that they gained weight and nobody wanted them because they gained weight.

 Yeah, exactly.

 We had a hard time selling those at the time. Yeah.



 So, now everything's got it. It's an expectation.

 Yeah.



 Well, I mean, there's a lot of bikes that they still sell without ABS. I think it's mostly...



 Honda still offers the offered bikes.

 Your Japanese bikes will offer an option. They'll have an ABS model and a non-ABS model.



 There's not really that in the European world. No. Hardly at all.



 Yeah, and it's like a $250, $300 option. Yeah. I think now that's why a lot of people go without it. They're like, "Oh, I don't want to pay that 300 bucks."

 Yeah. Save some money where you can, I guess. Yeah.



 So, what are we talking about today? What's the big news?

 So, KTM has been... Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. KTM has been under the microscope a lot in media and on social media in particular,



 really because they've done a really bad job with PR. And this started last year when they came out with an article saying that they were increasing their investment in CFMoto and in the Chinese market and moving some production there. And it was poorly handled on their part, in my opinion.



 There's that. There's issues regarding camshafts. There is the speculation that peer mobility groups going to drop the Husfarinar gas-gas line because they had a bad quarter and their stock price has suffered as a result.



 And I feel like they haven't really gotten ahead of it. They haven't controlled the narrative. They haven't got... Took control of the story and they've just let social media run with it. Yeah.



 So, I figured we could talk about some of those things and whatever order we want.

 I don't think they've handled... I don't think they've just handled things badly. I think they've been extremely transparent and that has not played out in their favor. I think they've been more transparent than most brands and I think people are leveraging that for news stories, for internet, for their own...



 Like right now there's media that got invited to Austria to tour the plant. They're basically opening the books.

 Yeah. And articles may be out by the time we do this.

 Yeah. I mean, I think by the time this airs here in a couple of weeks, I think there'll be some more clarity. But yeah, I mean, I don't think they've done anything necessarily badly.



 I think the climate of the motorcycle environment since COVID has been tough.



 We were all screaming for more and more and more product and every brand has given us more product and now we don't necessarily need it.



 And it's just the...



 You can't flip that switch and make it happen right now. It ramps up and this is what we've been left with.

 And the point in bringing people to Austria and taking them to the plant and bringing media people out there is a show that not only is KTM rocking and rolling still producing bikes but you're going to see gas gases on the line. You're going to see whose foreign is on the line.



 They're on the line and not only are they rocking and rolling, they're producing these bikes and they're producing them in Austria. And I think that's the narrative that they needed to control earlier that they're getting ahead of now. And it's some damage control for sure.

 It is, no doubt. Yeah. I mean, I think where you're going with this is the Chinese side of things.



 And they... I think if you just look at VIN numbers, I mean, the US designates VIN numbers on where stuff is produced, where vehicles are produced. And there are two models with KTM. L is the designation for China.



 So the prefix in the VIN number is L for China.



 And there's two models, 790 Duke and a 790 Adventure, right? So there's two models. And I looked at our inventory of KTM stuff. We have four motorcycles in stock with an L designation. So we've got four motorcycles in stock made in China.



 That's it.

 That's all?

 I don't... I don't see the big deal.

 And in the same vein, I would say go on any showroom.



 We can go across the street where we are and look at the showroom there and see L designations on VIN numbers. And I'm talking about Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, every brand almost. I guess every brand on the Japanese side, I would say, has an L designation on something, but KTM does it on two models and it becomes headline news.



 I just think that they did a good job of hiding it. The other brands have done a great job of hiding that some of their production has gone to China. But with KTM, they published an article. And you're talking about them being transparent. They published an article in their, I guess their press releases.



 And they said, "Hey, we're increasing our investment in China." And people just ran with it. And with that, you saw, you know, they had some production issues as far as during COVID because a lot of the manufacturers had sort of cut back. So the production wasn't there. So they had to go to other suppliers. One of those suppliers was Kimco. And you started seeing Kimco stamped on the side of some 2024 models because they had reached out to Kimco to try to build some cylinders for them.



 So people ran with that, said, "Okay, you had this Chinese article. You have Kimco."



 They left out the part that Kimco isn't China. It's Taiwan, which is only China if you ask China. Taiwan doesn't agree with that.



 But they absolutely outsourced some cylinders and you don't see that Kimco designation on the 25 models. So it was something that they reached out to these other suppliers for a temporary amount of time to get bikes out that people were demanding.



 And we'll probably never know the real story, right? But my understanding is Kimco's been building cylinders for a long time, for KTM. Everything. Yeah, yeah, for sure. They've been building a lot of stuff for a lot of different companies for a long time. But for KTM specifically,



 they've been building cylinders. And why wouldn't they want their name own a brand that huge, right?

 I don't know how long they've been building for KTM on the cylinders. I know Vertex was involved with that for a while, especially on the piston side. I don't know if that translated to cylinders or not. We don't know all of their suppliers, obviously.



 But I do know that Kimco was a Taiwanese company that was originally started by Honda and they branched off in 1967. And they're that old of a company and I've known that they've built engines for American companies. I know they've built engines for BMW at one point.



 They've built engines for a lot of different companies. They're good, reliable engines. Why is it a shameful thing to outsource to someone you know who does good work?



 When that's necessary.

 I mean, it's a global environment now, right? I mean, if you order something off Amazon, where does it come from? China. Yeah. I mean, or somewhere that you can't control is kind of my point. Yeah, it probably does come from China. But it's somewhere that you can't control and we all use it every day.

 Exactly.

 A couple of times a day sometimes. But yeah, I mean, what's this little BMW car? The i3?

 They do have an i3, yeah.

 So the long range i3 has a basically what equates to a generator in the back of it that is a Kimco motor.



 Nice. And it's the same motor that's in the BMW C Series, the 650 scooters.

 Okay.



 So yeah, everybody uses it. That's cool.



 There's just so much overlap.

 Yeah.

 And so for the bikes that are having the issues with KTM, are they fully produced in China or are they just being assembled in China?

 So on the ones with an L designation, those bikes are fully assembled and built in China. And that is the 790 Duke and 790 Adventure, like he said.



 But when you say issue, you're talking about the camp shaft issue?

 Yeah, the 798 and 990 camp shaft issues.

 That's backing up a couple of years. And I don't honestly know where those bikes, where the 790s were built then. Were they built in China then?

 The original engine for the 790s were built in China. So the very first ones were built by CF Moto. And they put those in an Austrian chassis and everything else was Austrian. But the engine itself was built in China.

 Because I think relative to the camp shaft issue, and I think KTM probably was late to the party getting involved on that, I think they probably denied some warranty claims. When the motorcycles were out of warranty, right? So any R designation with KTM gets a one-year warranty, everything else gets a two-year warranty, right? I'm still right saying that. So as long as you're not talking dirt bike.

 Yes. Didn't they retroactively go back and offer an extra warranty on some of those?

 So now they're saying, they put out a statement saying that they were going to, under a good will replace the camp shafts. But I don't think we'll ever see a recall because now you've got it printed.

 I think that's the issue that people have is they feel like they're admitting that there's an issue because they're replacing it. And they're not actually issuing a recall.

 In their statement, they said that they don't have an issue with camp shafts. They say that everyone says we do, so we'll do a good will.



 But they're in their head really good on a case by case basis to give the room to investigate why each one of them happened. And if there's a problem that's consistently happening with one of their bikes, they want to know about it.



 And we've had our own theories on why you've seen some of these. And I will say, how many say we had?

 Two. Seven 90s, no eight 90s. With all the bikes that we've got in the field,



 we've had two camp shaft failures.



 We've had other brands with much worse track records than that with camp shafts. And I guess there's no need to put a meter around the bush. I'm talking about BMW with four cylinders, so S1000, single R's, double R's, and XR's.



 The DLC coding was flaking off of the camp shaft followers and just knocking the lobes off the cams. Most of them early, early on.



 I mean, I remember a good customer, like 900 miles,



 the cams were just round.



 Wow.



 From what I've looked into,



 and from my perspective, I don't have the connections to actually speak with KTM like y'all do or have a rep or anything. So everything that we find as a consumer is just what's on the internet.



 And from looking into it, it doesn't seem like anybody actually knows what is causing the problem that everybody says is happening. They don't really know what it is. There's just an issue. And there's all these theories out there, but there's not a definite answer, especially out there in the YouTube world and Facebook groups and all that stuff.

 I've got my own theory.

 And yeah, I mean, we've talked about it. I mean, I think there's a couple of things that, from a manufacturing point of view,



 certain batches of certain things are problematic, right?



 And sometimes they can kind of trace the lineage of those parts back to the beginning and find a serial number run of those parts. That's what we were doing with the ChemShaft followers with BMW is, you know, OO1s or whatever through OO5s were the ones that were problematic. If you inspected a motor and the ChemShaft followers had those designations on them, you replaced the followers.

 And that way you're able to target a specific VIN number if you're going to issue a recall or something like that.

 Not just doing a recall that, you know, involves replacing stuff for no reason. I think the fact that most of these motorcycles are out of warranty is going to keep them from issuing a recall and saying that, you know, this VIN number to that VIN number is where the issues are. And we're going to do a recall. We're just going to replace ChemShafts on all of them. You know, if somebody pulls rocker cover off their motorcycle and sees that it's discolored



 from heat, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's got a ChemShaft issue, right? It's when they're scoring or the lobes are not the same duration or overlap or whatever that they're supposed to be.



 I think the biggest indication is noise to start with because the valve lash gets opened up and you've got stuff.

 Yeah. So wasn't that the deal that they put out the Goodwill is if you're hearing weird noises that are abnormal, take it into your dealer, they'll inspect it. And if they find there is an issue, then they'll replace the ChemShafts. But KTM will pay for it.

 Well, I think it's really important KTM has the option to pay for it, right? But they also have the option to... If the dealer says that it needs to be done. But they also have the option to deny it because it's not a recall. It's not a...they're doing it as Goodwill.

 Yeah, I think that's...from what I was reading into, and this is all from consumer perspective, is that was the issue that everybody had was there was a lot of people that felt like they had issues. They took it in, had it looked at, the dealer denied it or said that there wasn't an issue. KTM denied it, whatever. And then they had to pay for the diagnostic.



 And that's what they were really upset about. So they felt like they had to pay for a diagnostic, but then also they still had the problem that they thought that they had.



 And so that's where I think a lot of this...it's like reviews for a restaurant.



 You have a really bad experience at a restaurant. You're a thousand times more likely to leave a review or write a Facebook post about it than you are if you went and had a decent meal that was the service that you expected to have.

 Yeah, I mean, generally, nobody jumps online and says, "I got 50,000 miles on my whatever." Exactly. Car, motorcycle, truck.

 Yeah, how many Facebook groups are there that are like, "I've got a lot of people that are like, I've got a hundred thousand miles on this spot." Right.

 It's all the people with issues, right? So I think KTM from a brand is extremely aggressive. I think they like trying new things. They're always kind of pushing them bloke. And I think the repercussions of them doing that are some failures from time to time. But I think that, generally speaking,



 do we have that many issues? I mean, we don't have that many issues with them. No, we don't. Any motorcycles, KTM sales?

 I know a lot of guys that race KTM and I've not heard many issues like that.

 I mean, this goes back to my... I have this thing I call the Shinko principle.



 It's a technical... It's scientific. This will be good. But you buy a Dunlop for 150 bucks. You buy a Shinko for 75 bucks. They perform the same.



 Well, or the Dunlop performs better, but not enough better, right? You're going to praise that Shinko. You're going to be super, super happy about that Shinko. If that Dunlop shows any signs of premature wear, you're going to the manufacturer and you're complaining about it because you paid more, you deserve more, you expect more. We see that with BMW.



 Whenever you have a customer who buys a BMW and there's anything finicky at all, they're going to come back and talk to us about it. And that's why we have the people that we have that can help with that process and make sure that that goes smoothly for the customer.



 We see that the same with really all of our bikes. Well, if you pay 11, 12 grand right now for a KTM versus $7,000 for a Japanese bike, you're going to have the same kind of thing. Anything goes wrong on that KTM, you're going to complain about it and you're going to be loud about it.

 You feel like, "Yeah, I paid the premium and that's why I paid the premium because I wanted better quality. I wanted less issues." And so it's understandable.

 And how the manufacturer with that expectation who produces and sells more dirt bikes than Hana Yamaha Kawasaki and Suzuki combined every year and yeah, you're going to have some people who are just like, "Ah, this thing's a piece of crap." But really from a data perspective, we really don't see that.



 Just to kind of cap off the LCAC camshaft thing is what KTM is going to look for to approve a Goodwill is service records, whether that's from us or another dealer or that's the customer who is doing their own oil change. You can't roll into the store with a motor that's grenade and say, "I want to get this Goodwilled." And then you can't say that you've changed the oil. Yeah, you can't prove it.

 If it's under warranty, just take it to the dealer and let them do the service.

 Well, but you can change your own oil. You just have to document it. You have to document it. I think that's the key and that's with anything. I don't care what we're talking about. That's not just a KTM deal. That's an everything deal. But kind of what you're talking about as far as the bikes, KTM is creating razor blades, right? They've got very specific motorcycles for very specific applications. How many motocross bikes are there? Oh, man.

 Right. I mean, four strokes, you got the 250, 350, 450, and then you got the two strokes, you got the 125, you have a 250 and a 300 now, so you got three of each.

 But then we got a 150 and a 150 now, right?

 Oh, yeah, you got a 150 now. I'm not even getting into the minis. Right.

 Yeah. So, they're creating razor blades, like I said, and all the other brands are, they're making hatchets.

 Yeah, you got everybody else, you get a 250 and a 450.

 Right. And if you want a woods bike, it's the same 450 with an 18-inch rear wheel, a big tank, and a kickstand.

 Yeah.

 And it's the same motorcycle that's been out for 10 years, right?

 No difference in tuning.

 How many frames have we been through with KTM in the last, say, five years? How many variations of the frame? Are we three or four in the last?

 Well, you're not going to see three or four in the last five years there on a four-year cycle. So, yeah, I mean, every four years you get a new frame.

 Didn't we get a frame update this year?

 Well, yeah, you're right. We did get a frame update.

 And that's what I'm talking about. They're always trying to make it better.

 And then we look at...

 They're tweaking. We're not sticking with the same little motorcycles.

 Look at the Supercross championships over the last 10 years.



 It's not bold new graphics.

 Yeah.

 Yeah. It's... I look who's winning. Yeah.

 I mean, there's been several times where I've noticed, you know, eight out of the top ten are Austrian motorcycles.

 Yeah, exactly.



 You know, a little less so now. You got some good competitors out there right now.



 Crap. I can't think of his name.



 He's been doing really, really, really well. Eli Tomak. Eli Tomak's been doing really well.



 And we get... The Lawrence brothers are doing awesome. So you got some of those in there that are kind of... Those guys remain in a lab. They were. They're amazing.



 But anyway, point is Austria is still doing great in racing.



 And I'd say, bring up how many motocross bikes are there. Like how many bikes are there in a specific genre because that's one of the complaints on line and everywhere that you read is... Or maybe one of the examples of why KTM is shutting down, right? Or having issues is they're cutting out models. Yeah. That's always evolving, right? I mean, I'm thinking about a few years ago, there was a TX250 Husvarna.

 Yep.

 So, that would have been the two-stroke cross-country bike. So, 1850 XC.



 Right. And there still is... And there was then a 250 XC on the KTM side.



 They're always gonna look for what bikes are selling. And if there's something in orange that's outselling in white, 10 to one, they're gonna get rid of the Husvarna potentially, right? Or the gas gas. The gas gas race team hasn't done really, really well. No. The gas gas race team hasn't done well the last few years. So KTM, Husvarna gas gas, Pierre as a company, doesn't like losing. Nope. So, they're gonna do something with potentially with the gas gas race team because it's not performing.



 It's not living up to their standards.



 No, I mean, I think KTM is a great brand. They've been a great partner to us.



 And I think that some of this publicity that they're getting, this bad publicity,



 it's unjust.

 Well, it's almost impossible to outrun social media as a company.



 It's overnight. And you go and look at the Facebook groups, there's like 10,000 people. And what? You got maybe 100 people out of those 10,000 that have actually had the issues, and then everybody else just owns the same bike. And all of a sudden they believe that they're gonna have the same issues.

 Any issue that you have with a camshaft at this point, if you have it on 890, it's gonna be because KTM has problems with camshafts. It's not gonna be because of your dirt ingestion. It's not gonna be because of anything you did. It's because KTM has an issue with camshafts. So they won't live that part of it down.



 People also love to hate on the higher end brands.

 Oh yeah. That's what I was talking about with the Shinko principle. That's it.

 You're probably getting a lot of hate from people that don't even own a KTM. Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, how much hate just in the motorcycle world in general does BMW get just because of the price tag? Yeah. And it's like people are like, "Oh, I wouldn't spend that money for that kind of bike." And so anytime there's an issue, they're pulling their finger and they're laughing.

 If you and BMW are stuck up.

 Yeah, exactly.



 BMW has more recalls than anybody else. And my understanding is it's how the trade laws are established between different companies and like Ducati,



 not Ducati, but in Italy, you have to use parts. If there's a manufacturer that makes what you need for whatever, a Ducati, a washing machine, whatever, you have to source those parts from that manufacturer in Italy. And I would argue that we maybe should do more of that here, but we're way past that here. Yeah, for sure. It's all gone.



 But I'm thinking back to fuel tanks, swelling on what, S4Rs, 1198. That was before me. Okay, so I don't know when was an S4R out 12, 15 years ago?

 Yeah.

 And then like an 1198 Street Fighter, the fuel tanks were swelling because Atervis was building the fuel tanks is my understanding.



 And because Ducati had to get the fuel tanks from them. Yeah.



 So yeah, I mean, nobody's perfect. Everybody's going to source stuff from where they can. Everybody's going to have failures from time to time. Everybody's going to have issues.

 But you can't make everything in house. Like, I mean, especially to get these bikes out in time, the average person doesn't understand the amount of R and D that goes into building a new motorcycle.



 And so you can't always just make everything from the ground up in one facility. It just doesn't work that way.

 Yeah. I mean, and to be clear, we're not denying that there are no Chinese parts on a KTM.

 No.

 And I would say that what we are denying is that the KTM dirt bikes and models that aren't the 790 designation,



 they are not considerably made in China or any other country. They are mostly assembled in Austria. I'm sure there's some components they get elsewhere. But from what I can see, I mean, most stuff on KTM, if you go part number to part number, it says made in Austria on the part or on the bag.



 And I would say that KTM, for the most part, if you're looking for that L designation, and I invite everyone to look at the L designation on showrooms, you can go to a Honda showroom and see more of those on the Honda showroom than you would on the KTM. Yeah.



 And speaking of quick pop quiz designations on--



 the numbers.



 What's a W?



 W B that's Germany.

 That's Germany. All right. And then we got the Z.



 Yeah. I don't know what Z is that beta is that Z is Italy.

 Yeah. Z is Italy. Yeah. And then we got the V.



 V B K that's Trump. That's Austria. Oh, that's, yeah, yeah. That's Austria. What's Trump?

 Crap. What's that?



 SMT I think is the S designation. The UK.

 Yeah. And then we got J for Honda and you got one for the U S it. So you can look at the numbers and pretty much tell where these, these bikes are manufactured. And if you ever are curious, you could actually look it up there. You just Google it real quick. You'll find a chart that will show you.

 I think one through five or one through six is us. So I think so like the U S made Harleys would, would start with a, you know, a one, two, three, four, five. Maybe I don't remember. I think they all start with one. I think they're one HD.

 I know all the Harleys are one HD. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, you can look at that information that's freely available. So rather than looking and spreading all these rumors and trying to speculate where things are made, you could just look at the VIN number and find out a lot.

 Well, that goes back to what I was just saying. I think a lot of the people that are talking the loudest about it, probably not even own a KTM.



 They're Honda fanboys who want to insult their guy who spent too much money on a bike.

 Exactly. So I mean, what they really need to do is go ride their motorcycle.

 Yeah. Stop whining online and ride your bike.



 They're just sitting at home talking on the forums and the Facebook groups about riding. Well, I mean, go ride.

 The other manufacturers have no incentive to shut this conversation up. Like, they, they do benefit from people believing those things about KTM, regardless of the veracity of it or not.

 Yeah. It's competition, man. I mean, it's business

 and none of them were perfect, right? I'm not, and I'm not going to sit here and say that KTM is and I, you know, I, I guess I'm a, you know, like I said, KTM has been a great partner to us just like all of our brands have, but they all have their own set of issues, right?

 I mean, how many bikes do they make a year? Totally. I know. How many millions? Like you're going to have a few issues and what it really comes down to is whether they're willing to fix them or not. Yeah. If they have to, you know, it's like if it's outside of the warranty and they don't have to, they could just be like, ah,

 well, they've said that they're going to goodwill. It's exactly the right thing to do. That is the right, rather than recalling everyone and telling them all to bring back their bikes. If anything, that would draw more attention to it. Um, we talked about the, you talked about already the, our designation being like the, they only have a year warranty on those are designation bikes and it's because the R designation bikes are the ones that like the eight 90 adventure are. That's what we're talking about rather against the eight 90 adventure. Um, the R means you're going to be taking it off road and whenever you're going off road, there's a lot of different things that are going to make it a lot harder on the bike. You're planning, we're planning on you trashing that bike. It should be upside down at some point. Please do that. Ride your bike. Um, but, uh, one thing that you and I have talked about is that I would like to start seeing our designations on, uh, we'll change intervals because that's really what, you know, that's really a better measure of how, um, how much wear and tear is being put on the engine. And these bikes have 9,000 mile old change intervals and you know, that sounds pretty large because it is pretty large.

 Yeah. But if that's 9,000 off road miles, that's a lot of hard miles, 9,000 miles on the highway and 9,000 miles off road. Yeah. It's completely different. Yeah.

 Justin, what's your, your truck's a Dodge, right? Uh, it's a GMC. Has it got the countdown all the oil change like a hundred percent, nine percent, eight. All right. So, so, you know, most of the new vehicles have that, right?

 And it'll show the engine hours and everything being a diesel that keeps up with all that stuff.



 And it's on a, I don't know about on diesel, but on a gas motor, it's looking at map sensor data, right? Throttle, throttle position sensors it's looking at transmission temperatures to make the calculation on whether that a hundred percent is 10,000 miles or 5,000 miles. Right. And that's where Jeff is going with this. And it's, it's a severe duty aspect of it. If you, if you hook a 10,000 pound trailer to the back of your truck, that, you know, a hundred percent is going to get burned up a whole lot quicker than it will throw in, you know, Yeah.

 You're going to need to change your fuel filters sooner. You're going to need to change your air filters sooner.

 So like everything, it's more wear and tear. Yeah. We don't have that technology on motorcycles yet, but Jeff where you're going with this is under severe conditions. We can't go by just the standard or change air filter, uh, just the general service intervals, right?

 Yeah. Um, 90, well look at what price or $9,000 for street use. I mean, say you're going 150 hours on that. Well, if you're doing 9,000 miles off road, you're looking closer to 300 hours on that.

 Yeah. Cause you're not going to be going 70, 80 miles an hour.

 And it's not just, you know, old degradation, isn't really an issue. Um, we have synthetics that last for the oil change interval and that's not a problem. What is an issue is your oil filter and decorating. Um, and I will say that from experience, the, one of the very first, um, seven 90 adventures that I sold, um, it went out to a guy who went out to Colorado and whoever did his oil change, let something pass the oil filter. Um, he somehow in that oil change contamination happened and it clogged up an old jet. The very first thing to get damaged from that was the cam, the camshaft. So I really see that this is an oil issue, in my opinion, but, um, we'll, we'll see, we'll see what the data shows.

 Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the whole issue is or what the issue is on the, on the camshafts. I, I, I think it's KTM doesn't have to fix these things. Right. So I think it's stand up from KTM perspective and it's, it's damage control to some point, right? Um, but at the end of the day, uh, I guess the reason for saying all this severe duty and the oil change intervals and that kind of stuff is there's things that is outside of KTM's control, you know, is the gas service in his own air filter and, and fair failed to get there. Yeah. Filter, you know, back in the, in the housing properly and

 easy to get in there anyway. So I'd say that's probably neglected fairly often.

 Yeah. And now they, you know, like it's dry here right now. Right. I mean, uh, when we ride on, on Saturday, it's going to be dusty. Like it's not going to be the further back you are. It's the less fun it's going to be.

 Um, I'll get air filter afterward.

 Yeah. I'll get back and I'll, I'll service the bike, right? Um, because I know it's going to ingest all that, that dirt and dust. Um, you know, if it's muddy, it's, it's hard on wheel bearings. It's hard on braces, things like that. If, if it's dusty, it's hard on hard on the motor. If, if you're not doing the things that you're supposed to do. So, yeah, I mean, I think that is the, that's going to be what KTM uses as the determining factor on whether or not they goodwill this stuff or not is the service records, you know, like they'll normally ask us for a picture of the left and right of the motorcycle, right? They want to know what condition the motorcycles out. If it's, if it's beat to death and looks like it just got drug out of a junkyard, they're, they're probably not going to be terribly inclined to fix it.

 And people will say like, if that's the case, why doesn't KTM say that in an owner's manual or something like that? They do have allowances in the owner's manual for cases of abuse or neglect, but they also expect the rider to have a little bit of common sense where if you've been riding behind a truck that's throwing dust in your face the whole time, you should probably know that your air filter is going to be pretty dirty.

 Point is there's, there's variables that they can't control, right? And, and some of that, um, has to fall back on us as the, as the consumer, as the riders, uh, and maybe as a dealer to, to educate people. Right. That falls on us to it for sure.

 Yeah. It's not a car. Yeah. At the end of the day, it's a motorcycle. Uh, they're not expected to go a hundred thousand miles. It's not expected to be your daily commuter. You're not taking it every, you know, 60 to 90 days to fast lube to get the old change.

 It's not like it's easy to pop the hood and take the cover off and look at your air filter. It's, it's going to take some work if you're wanting to ride off road.



 And like all the different conditions and how you ride it. And it, you should always kind of go back and look at what the racers are doing, you know, it's especially motocross, you know, you're changing the oil every few hours. And that's the only thing on a motocross bike typically is your hour meter. And if your bike doesn't come with one, that's the first option that you put on there is an hour meter right there. So you can see, and so you spend all weekend racing, you're changing everything at the end of the weekend, if not between practice and race day, you know, and so it's, it's because you want to take care of your machine. And I mean, when it comes to motocross, like you want to make sure that nothing's going to happen in the middle of the race. Cause it can be deadly. Yeah. I mean, you lock up and going up the face of a jump, you're screwed. There's no fixing that.



 And so at the end of the day, it's a motorcycle. It's a luxury item. It's a toy, but it's, it's meant for a specific thing. And if you're going to ride it, you should either know how to do it yourself or take it to the right people that you do and do it on the right intervals and let it be done. Cause a car you can neglect and not change the oil for 30,000 miles. And you're probably still going to get home, right? You know, and so it's take a little bit of personal responsibility.

 Yeah.

 I mean, I agree.

 And, and, uh, you know, it's funny to me how, the reason that all this stuff's online, the reason that people get so, um, Adam and about this stuff is we're passionate about it, right? As riders, we're all passionate about it, but then we pick and choose what we're passionate about, right? We're not, we're not passionate about maintenance. We're not passionate about taking care of the bikes. We're not passionate about rider education. Uh, we don't, you know, that a lot of people don't go to schools to become better riders.



 Um, but then we're the, you know, we're all the worst, our own worst enemy when it comes to like the stuff on the media with KTM and, and gropping about it. Yeah.

 Well, I mean, let's be honest, the clips from this episode where we're talking about standard maintenance is not going to get as many views as the clips about the bikes blowing up.



 It's just the way that it is, you know, it's like you're not really going on YouTube and watching 20 videos on how to change your oil and your bike. You're going to watch one, but if there's an issue with your bike, you're going to watch every video that you can find and get every perspective that you can find, especially

 if you own that bike, you're worried about it. They've, they've sparked that.

 Or even if you had just thought about buying it.

 Yeah.

 Like if you're in the market and you're between an eight 90, uh, a tiger 900 and you know, an Africa twin, you're looking at those three, you're going to watch 50 videos of each bike and figure out. And if there's an issue with one, that's, that's going to sway your decision.

 And I'll point out anecdotally, it, you know, it's all seven nineties and eight nineties. Uh, the data shows that it's more seven nineties and if it's an eight 90, it's an early eight 90. Yeah. So as far as what we are actually encountering, it's not, we haven't had anything that wasn't eight 90 ourselves. No, what I hear in the market is that it's, it's the early productions of the eight nineties as well.

 2020 21. Uh, I don't know.

 I guess. Um, yeah, I don't remember.

 I don't know your models.

 Uh, 19, I think was the last year of the seven 90 and then they went to eight, 90 and 20. I may be wrong. Uh, maybe it was around that area. Um, but, uh, it has affected sales. I mean, I think that we can say that it's affected sales on those models. Um, but I will say I wouldn't have any, any issue at all buying an eight 90 right now. It's not, uh, it's not like these things are falling apart.

 I mean, I really wouldn't have an issue minded. You know, obviously I'd like for you to come to storm by new eight 90, right? But I wouldn't have an issue behind a used seven 90. It's just the, the percentage of failures so low,



 you know, I think you could, I'm trying to think what fails on a, you know, as good as we always talk about GSA and how, how bulletproof they are. And they're kind of the, the, the baseline for everything else. And I mean, they have failures, right? Um, but the percentages is extremely low. Um, you know, rear drives going back a few years, rear drives on BMW, you know, that, that was huge, um, with everybody complaining about it. And it wasn't that, yeah, I mean, there were rear drives locked up, running down the freeway at 80 and that's, that's never good. Um, but it wasn't that

 prevalent. Yeah. Well the issue on my, my tiger with the rear wheel and the spokes, and it's like, that wasn't like a common thing, but they knew it was an issue. It wasn't enough to issue a recall on it, but they replaced the wheel. Right. And in my mind, going through that and thinking, I'm like, dude, it's a wheel. Like, I, I just assumed that someone else made that wheel and they were using it. So it's not like a triumph thing, you know, and it's a spoke wheel. So it's, it's a special wheel for a special model, basically. Uh, cause the majority of the tigers are going to have cast wheels on them. Majority is the ones on the road.

 I understand alarm bells going off whenever you're like, whenever you're looking at a wheel, it's, you know, auxiliary item. That's like attached to the motor.

 Um, you can't just do an engine swap.

 Yeah. Whatever you do, whatever you see Kimco stamped on the side of an engine, I get it. Like that's alarming. It's you bought your mind a KTM, not a Kimco. And that brings some alarm to the, to the conversation. Well, it takes just a little bit more to say, well, they did it because, you know, they had a shortage of cylinders and they have had to, um, they've had to bring in different, um, different suppliers for things and that kind of increased their costs. And that's one thing we wanted to talk about as well. Um, the, uh, the financial statements and things that have come out there, but, um, yeah, it's, it's easier to look at a wheel and be, you know, peaceful about that whenever it gets something more serious. It's, uh, you know,

 I don't know. I'd rather have a top end explode than a wheel explode. Well, I mean, while you're riding,



 I'll take a motor grenade any day over a wheel.



 But especially when you're 3000 miles from home.



 But I mean, you're, you know, your wheel, you'd been riding off road.

 Yeah. Like that.

 I'm back to triumph in that case, KTM with camshafts, but drop in your case can't control the narrative, right? They can't control the situations that you put that motorcycle in. Not everybody is going to put the motorcycle in the same situation. Um, so,

 you know, I mean, I was in the middle of a 5,000 mile trip, weighted down cross country, going off road on road, going up pikes peak, everything.

 I put that bike through hell. And in fairness, if you had stopped and checked spoke tension, it probably would

 have figured out it wouldn't have been, yeah, if I would have checked the rear wheel and not the front wheel, but the front wheel is a lot easier to get to.

 Exactly.

 And that's why I was checking.

 But manufacturers know if they challenged him on that, if they challenge you on that, they would, you know, make some customers mad just trying to like get out of paying warranty. Right. And that's the way it would come across to the customers. So, you know, they take good care of the customers. Uh, then I'd say that for any of our brands.

 I mean, it's such an interesting dynamic between with us being in the middle. Um, cause it, you know, it's sometimes, well, not sometimes, I mean, we go to bat for customers all the time that the manufacturers have said, no, we're not going to go to that, right? We're not going to take care of that. It's outside of warranty. They're the second owner, whatever the situation is.

 And we do that without the customer having to know.

 Right.

 Um, yeah. Y'all handled all that for me. I brought it in the first time. Y'all tightened everything up, fix, uh, replace the missing spokes. And then the next trip I took, they were coming off again. And so that's what y'all went to try and feel like, Hey, like we tried to fix this. This is, this is an issue. And they immediately sent another wheel.

 And the deal was, is the wheel was fatigued at that point. Um, I don't care how many spokes you put in it. It was still going to loosen up spokes and then things were going to break and, and have the same issue over and over and over again. And it was going to get, you know, the, the repetitiveness, the timeframe in which it was bad was going to shorten up every time because of the fatigue in the wheel.

 So that was not an issue. That was an easy, that was an easy solution. And by the time we swapped out the wheel, I was trading it in anyways. He

 traded it in without having the wheel replaced.

 I did this. Y'all had it in the back. Yeah. Yeah. We fixed it. Y'all fixed it. After I traded it out, and no issue since I got that guy loves that. Yeah. He loves it.

 Yeah. And we talked about it last time or a couple, uh, podcasts ago, but yeah, you, you saw him at one of the rods.

 Yeah. He was at the end of the, he was at the, at the store when we got back. And, uh, I think I was like, that looks familiar. That's my bike. So is everybody good with KTM?

 I'm good. I wanted to at least trust the next thing that is on everybody's mind as far as, uh, social media is concerned. I mean, uh, you know, with the, uh, the recent, um, financial reports that have come out from KTM, they, uh, you know, they, they suffered in the first quarter in the first half, I guess is what this is looking at. Um, and their investors reacted and they reacted strongly and, uh, they're, their stock price, stock price tanked. Um, and I do think that that's a little bit of an overreaction and, um, we've, so that sparked a lot of rumors online about the future of KTM and what they are, um, what the plans are. And, you know, the people have said, they're going to scrap who's far enough. They're going to scrap gas gas. I heard those rumors while I was at the Tennessee knockout. Someone came up to me and was like, what's this news about gas gas being folded? I'm like, no, they're not going to get rid of gas gases.

 There's so much videos about it on YouTube. Yeah. Talking about layoffs and yeah. Cutting out.

 And, you know, layoffs happened like there, there were layoffs. They got rid of some employees because they've cut production back by 25% to match what the market's demanding.

 Everybody's suffering right now.

 Right. And stock prices for every company right now, if you look at the stock market right now, it's not a good place to have had your money. It's a good place to put your money now. Um, but, uh, anyways, so.

 Yeah. Everybody's suffering. This is just a compounded issue because they had this on top of everybody already having a bad year.

 Yeah.

 And so it just, that snowball starts.

 Well, well, they didn't lay off and I, I heard a percentage of how many people they laid off. Do you have, I don't, I don't know what it was, but regardless,



 I would say that most of those people that, how many?

 So they restructured and laid off 373 people. Um, at the same time they are incorporating in via Gusta and hired back at another 213 people. Um, which there's, you know, a hundred something difference there. Um, that doesn't see seem to me like a company that's, you know, going out of business or cutting.

 How many total employees do they have?

 Uh, let's see, actually, uh, 6,000.

 So regardless, it's a super small percentage. Right. But, um, I would dare say that most of those people were hired during COVID, right?

 Right.

 From because production got up considerably and, and now they're going back to pre COVID personnel levels, because we're back to pre COVID production levels. Right. So I, is, I mean, we, are we comparing apples to apples? No, we're not. Um, we're comparing, you know, uh, an analogy that on hopefully never ever happened again, uh, which, which was COVID and the amount of sales, um, you know, and I, you could probably look at any side by side manufacturer. You probably look at any boat manufacturer. You're probably looking at any kayak or canoe or whatever RV camper. All that stuff that, that blew up during COVID and they've probably laid off some people that they hired during COVID to, to build those things, um, to, to meet the demand.

 All it is is a cool off. That's really all. It's just a cool off. Like it, it had to kind of cap somewhere and then now it's trying to balance back out.

 We talked about that every month whenever we had good numbers during COVID. We're like, Hey, it's good this month. It's not going to last forever.

 Enjoy it while you can, but don't, don't bank on it. Right.

 And I kept saying to Matt, I'm like, don't compare our numbers to last year, please. Uh,



 cause it's, it's not going to be as good. Um, you know, one alarming statistic that they put in here is that the sales of e-bicycles, it says they only fell by 26%, which that's not an only to me. That's a, that's a large number.

 Yeah, that's a lot.

 And uh, they point to the fact that the e-bicycle industry has been flooded with all kinds of manufacturers getting into it. I mean, even Jeep has an e-bicycle.



 Um, Ducati has one. I mean, everybody seems to have something out there in the e-bicycle world because they're trying to get to e-mobility and um, yeah, as more players come in, your sales are going to drop.

 Yeah. If you're one of the first ones to, to come to the industry, you're going to kind of explode. And then as it, as everybody else kind of enters the playing field, you're like, so you're just going to, you're going to kind of cool off because you've got more competition.

 Bring that up to say that they've been going through a lot of restructuring in the bicycle world and that reflects on peer mobility's numbers. And uh, they wrote off a lot of the bicycles that were in there. I've got to figure, I'm not sure how accurate it was, but you know, it was in the millions. Um, and that affected their bottom line. I'll also, they, they point to, um, how during COVID they had to sign contracts with cuz, with suppliers that were not the usual suppliers. They had to start getting into these contracts and they were paying more money for parts and things that were necessary to get the number of bikes out that the dealer demanded because the customer was demanding it from us. And so as we talk about this, think about how KTM makes money. They make money because us, the dealer are buying their motorcycles and all of these retail incentives that they put out rebates and things like that. That just comes off of that. So they sold us the motorcycles in 2024 with these higher costs associated with them because they had all this, all these new manufacturers they had to invest in. And then 2020, sorry, 2024 models came out in 2023. We sold, we got, we bought the bikes 2024 rolls around and we're having to, you know, offload the inventory because the market's not where it was. So they're having to put these retail incentives on the bikes and that's a high cost for them. Meanwhile, you know, we didn't see a lot of motorcycles being delivered to us in the first half of the year. You know, we had some residual 24 come in. We had some of their 25s that have already come in, but we haven't seen a lot of the street models that we expected. We just now started getting spark villains and that pill and 401. So they're here now. So we have to look at all of that when we considered the position that KTM is in and in the world market, they actually point to the European market being up. The Europe is up everywhere else is down.

 Well, I think Europe probably is up because of the COVID hangover, right? So they COVID affected them a lot more than it affected. Like Honda is up right now because of how Japanese production works and they were late to the party relative to our European brands on getting inventory. So they had all this pent up demand.



 Um, and, and now they're they're doing a really good job of filling that demand.

 23 was one of their worst months in history because they didn't have any inventory. So you're comparing these numbers to last year where there wasn't a limit

 and we didn't have enough inventory. We were screaming, but you know, I don't remember exactly what we did in May, but I remember May being a good month, right? For us because we had a enough inventory. Um, we're we're, you know, the Japanese brands had no inventory.

 Yeah. Um, yeah. And they can either take advantage of that and create more demand and make it seem like the bikes are more scarce, which increases demand for those people thinking that they're, I don't know, what cooler happened or they can go to a different brand that's got stuff in stock.

 It can go one of two ways during, uh, during COVID. I don't think people are aware of this, but um, the supply of KTM motorcycles to the U S never decreased. Um, there was this perception out there that bikes were hard to get and they were hard to get because there was a perception that bikes were hard to get is a self fulfilling prophecy. So people came into the dealership willing to pay whatever. Yeah.

 Cause they thought they were scarce.

 And a lot of dealers took advantage of that and started price gouging customers coming up with DSRPs that were above MSRP. And, uh, I think that, um, you know, our memories are short a lot of times, but we didn't do that. We weren't involved in that. And I think that that, um, you know, was, uh, Ford actually cracked down on their dealers because Ford dealers were doing that pretty significantly with

 the Bronco and the, yeah. And so the, the Machi and the Raptor. Yeah.

 That was the message that Ford sent to their dealers is like, Hey, stop this. Don't do that. They're going to remember that whenever, you know, this is over and it's going to be over sometime. And hopefully people remember. People did remember that. And hopefully people remember the dealers that treated them well.

 Yeah. I mean, I'm proud to say that we, we charge a lot of people retail, right? I mean, I'll, yeah, I mean, absolutely. We did that, but we didn't charge anybody not even on special models, you know, limited stuff, stuff that was, was super exclusive at the time. Uh, we didn't charge anybody over MSRP for, for anything.

 Yeah. But I see this, the financial statements as just coming off of COVID and there's a lot of reasons for it. And there's a lot of excuses that we could throw out there, but don't be afraid that KTM is not going anywhere. Gas gas, doesn't go anywhere. Who's foreign. They're all restructuring. They all know that they have to, but

 so, yeah, I mean the,



 their own, you know, they're, they're planning out three, four, sometimes five years ahead, right? So the only reaction that's happening right now is to COVID. The problem is, it's like a whip, right? You do something right, you know, right here and 10 feet that way something happens. And we're from an inventory level point of view, we're feeling the effects of what as dealers, we all asked for during COVID, right? Which is, which is more motorcycles because we didn't have enough motorcycles to sell. We didn't get less motorcycles. Like you said a minute ago, but the demand was escalated.



 So we, we want to fill that demand. So we asked for more motorcycles. They ramp up production that goes back to the, to the excess and, and employees on the production side of things that are now laid off because production's back down

 25% they've cut production.

 And that was planned like I said, three, four, five years ago. And right now they're planning for three, four, five years from now. So,



 as a, as a friend of mine said recently, when we were talking about this, you know, what do you vote for lunch five years from now? Right? Right. I don't know. Yeah. You don't know. Yeah. I mean, why, why are you asking me what I want? Well, that's what they're trying to do. As a dealer, we're planning a year from now, which is hard enough. And then from the manufacturer point of view, and that's not just, that's everybody right. And I don't care what manufacturer it is. They're planning way, way down the road.

 And I don't care what brand it is. I know that Harley's swallowing the pill now. And I think that KTM is swallowing the pill now, but that pill is coming for everybody. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of manufacturers out there that are caught with their pants down and yeah, they're going to suffer for it. And I think that KTM is just doing this restructuring and you know, accounting for it now rather than waiting for the market to decide it's time. Yep.

 So what it comes down to is there's always more to the story.

 Oh yeah. For sure.

 The story is always much bigger than what you see service level. So be careful what you read and what you watch. There's always more to it. So all right guys. Well on that, we're going to check out on this episode. This is a good episode. I like it. So, um, for the throttle stop motor podcast brought to you by Pandora's European Motorsports. I'm Justin.

 Jeff.

 Matt. Thanks guys. Thank you. Cool.