So why do the Harley stats have your panties all in a wad?
I'll tell you a couple of things, you want to see bunches of riders putting on serious miles go to the touring section of HD Forums. There are guys that routinely and not thinking about it put up well over 150k miles on their bikes. And I actually think the Rushmore bikes are going to make 200k or better. They are seriously improved over the prior generation. There are bunches of guys that own all kinds of BMW motorcycles along with their Harleys. Guys that can afford one can afford the the other. A comment I have seen over and over is "When I am touring the country I take the Harley, it's just more comfortable". Heck on any Saturday just eyeball evidence will tell you Harley is the brand of choice people are out riding. Just start lumping bikes into two categories, Harley and everything else. I'll bet the Harleys come up two to one or more over the everything else category. It's almost become weird lately, a few years ago you would probably see some kind of metric then a Harley, some kind of metric, then a Harley, ..., and so on. The last few years it just seems like when I am out touring around its Harley, Harley, Harley, something else, Harley, Harley, Harley, something else, ... I don't know why, but it appears those that have stayed with riding now that the fad is over frequently prefer the MotorCo's offerings over other brands. I know locally around where I live, the Pittsburgh area, we have seen a lot of metric bike dealerships close in the last few years. All of the Harley dealerships except one (Owner retired, MotorCo would not let the owner sell his Harley franchise) are open and doing well. Heck even European Motorcycles of Pittsburgh has dropped back to carrying just two brands, BMW & Ducati. They used to carry five or six other brands in addition to those two. It is what it is.