Vaughn Beals Jr, who was principally responsible for dragging Harley-Davidson back from the brink of potential oblivion in 1981 and then comprehensively resurrecting the company, died on 19 August. He was 90 years old.
At that time, Harley was a shambolic mess churning out shoddy and unreliable bikes that couldn’t compete with far superior Japanese products flooding into the US market. A victim of more than a decade of chronic under-investment since acquisition by the AMF conglomerate in 1969, it was losing money hand over fist and facing bankruptcy.
Following an AMF announcement that the brand was up for sale, Beals put together a leveraged buy-out team involving a dozen other executives from within AMF’s Motorcycle Products Group — including Willie G Davidson, Harley’s chief designer and a grandson of company co-founder William A Davidson. They got financial backing from CitiCorp, reputedly to the tune of $81.5m, and Beals became chief executive of an independent business.
He promptly slashed the bloated workforce by 40%, cut wages and introduced quality-promotion and efficiency methods cheerfully copied from Japan, such as novelties like just-in-time inventory control. Within five years, Harley had reduced its post-production snagging rate from 50% to just 1%. Beals focused on reviving customer loyalty too, most notably through creation of Harley Owners Group (HOG) chapters — which now number more than 1400 worldwide with over a million members.
In 1983, he also persuaded US President Ronald Reagan to impose protective tariff barriers on large-capacity Japanese motorcycles for a limited five-year period, to help Harley’s recovery. And illustrating the speed of its success in this endeavour, Beals subsequently asked Reagan to remove the tariffs a year earlier than scheduled. Progressively revitalised, Harley-Davidson went public with a intial share offer in 1986 and a full New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) listing in 1987.
Beals was quite frank about where his ideas came from, acknowledging Japanese influence in a 1989 Fortune Magazine interview. “We were being wiped out by the Japanese because they were better managers,” he opined “It wasn’t robotics, or culture, or morning calisthenics and company songs. It was professional managers who understood their business and paid attention to detail.”
Perhaps pertinently, Vaughn Beals had no biking background before joining AMF in 1975 as a senior manager in its motorcycle operations. An MIT graduate in aeronautical engineering, he had worked in the aviation industry directing technological research for ten years until 1965, moving on to become vice president of research and engineering, and later a divisional head at truck engine manufacturer Cummins.
Beals stood down as Harley’s chief executive in 1989 and then served as company chairman until 1996. Commenting on his death, current Harley supremo Matt Levatich said: “During some of the most challenging times in the long legacy of Harley-Davidson, Vaughn Beals brought vision and powerful leadership to this great company. We’ve carried his leadership lift under our wings ever since and we always will.”