Living in Sweden, this country never lacked in the engineering/idea department. It's always the business side that is the nail in the coffin. Just look at all the innovative companies that are no longer Swedish, or have gone extinct. Saab, Volvo, Sony Ericsson, Husqvarna, Husaberg and many more. It saddens me.
Just look at GB exactly the same. It's the Government that fcks it's own people. For an extra buck they'll ruin homegrown businesses and push Chinese products. Absolutely Crazy
I remember the Supermoto forum pages back then. In the US there was a lot of excitement for these things. I had an SM model as my desktop background. Then the plane crash happened and it was pretty much game over.
yeah, from reading the forums it seemed like the hype was real especially in the US. What I really appreciated was that there were people that got really interested after talking personally to the founders, it’s like everyone who met them in person suddenly gained a big bunch of trust in their future.
another great video, thank you! The Highland V2 was a bombshell, every real petrolhead on two wheels followed the developement of this bike and finally wanted to own one!
shut up, every "real" motocross enthusiast knew this was going to fail no matter what. Just like Cannondale and BMW - they thought they knew better than the establishment. VOR, Vertemati, Husaberg, all of them tried way to hard to reinvent the wheel. Triumph, Beta, and Ducati will all be successful because they are not doing any of that nonsense. they are building Japanese style motocross bikes...as they should. Highland wasn't even a flash in the pan...as the pan never even got hot. The engineering was flawed in every way. You wouldn't know that because you don't know shit... your just some dumbass average "dude" consumer who thinks thinks "cool" equals good. Cool does not equal good. Real racing machines require "real" engineering and development...not ideas.
I remember this company I was very excited and wanted to buy one. I sold two bikes I had to get ready for one just before the plane crash happened. The company did continue briefly and communicated with all of us potential buyers all the way to the end.
As always, well done. How terrific it would be to custom order an Enduro motorcycle with such performance. My favorite motorcycle, which I should’ve kept, was a KTM 950 super Enduro. The Highlander would have been lighter with more power. A dream not to come true…
I have been completely ignorant of this story. Still I'm Swedish and have been riding bikes for twenty years, so I don't understand how I could have missed it. I remember being in my teens reading of the Folan engine, around 1990. I recall there was someone that had built something like a Swedish Ducati around a Folan V-twin, and I thought it was so cool. The engines looked so clean and minimalistic, beautiful pieces.
Awsome video as usual. I hate how things like this happen to awsome people and ideas, especially when they involve a new motorcycle company. I would love to see you make a video on the Synergy Motorsports Q450.
Thanks! I had to work with what I had, and tried to keep at least the idea of what happened to a decent accuracy, even though I couldn’t find the exact plane for example. I’ll keep that in mind though!
Heartbreaking ! The biggest problem with current motorcycle companies today is upper management that only cares about making money, not motorcycles. Case in point, Harley Davidson. The opposite, Royal Enfield, riders develop and make the product, every aspect of their motorcycles are rider experience focused.
This was a real detailed and quality produced documentary. When there is an obvious bias of passion, this appeals to the audience because it plays on 'what could have been?' component that much of the documentary culture tries to avoid with factual unbias ambiguity......the human emotional element is quite possibly the most significant part to any story. Unfortunately the modem would has made attempts to dehumanise instead of customised; a notion of COTS (commercial of the shelf) "once size fits all" approach is diametrically opposed to what this company was attempting to offer? It's actually sad when market leaders collude to stamp out opposing interests as they don't want those kinds of things becoming mainstream because they will need to adapt and that will cost them money and expands customers expectations. This became an issue when 3rd party American brands were developed and piggybacking a whole industry of customisations and upgraded performance parts. The industry doesn't want a factory bike with all the goods on it standard out of the box because the performance retailers then have nothing they can sell you that is an impediment over the factory offering or they struggle to offer a cheaper component of the same quality as the factory part just as an alternative? Hop of a Japanese motocross bike of the 2000s compared to the likes of Husqvarna and it's like night and day. Never had I had a bike that had everything like performance brakes, braided lines, competition triple clamps bar risers monotube protaper style bars, performance pipe, quality oring chain, light weight and absolutely ballistic performance........ All of this was unacceptable to manufacturers until it had to become mainstream to keep up. Japanese bikes only began to do similar offerings but it became a walled garden approach with a consortium of brands for the Japanese initially to appease North America, because that's of course the marketing style of the US. The US will manipulate the motocross industry through rules that will exclude manufacturers from competing in the North American championships. We see it all the time and it's really nasty and disgusting tactics that actually really repulsive to the public. We have these heros out there as brand ambassadors to brands that at their heart on North America as almost parasitic capitalism. Making money for moneys sake and then using that money to make sure nobody else can achieve what they have achieved. This is repeated over and over throughout all of history and is comes come corruption of capitalism and opposes the core idea of free market capitalism and the idea of more competition is positive to the consumer? What America was built on the beliefs it's culture developed into are opposing. Corporatism isn't free market capitalism in any way shape or form. Their idea is that there shall be no more slices in ever increasing diameter economic pie. Just the idea of their greed is incompatible with passion as it's only there for profitable reasons and doesn't care about the customer because that requires empathy and that doesn't work in the share market of ruthless investors who only care about money not about person riding the bike? It's crap to think that the would believes they need to go to America to be successful when the American markets oppose competition. The more players the less control over the market and market share. This company should have remained a bespoke bike company with just a loyal customer base that continued to support the people it had and just accepted that they wouldn't be accepted in competition in America. Build bikes for people to enjoy and not care about rider endorsements or televised publicity or anything like that? More demand would mean scaling up and that's not aligned with R&D and that's why manufacture segregated R&D and capped investment became they don't want the best they want what is the most profitable? Even the idea of markets and money is opposed to the idea of riding bikes for leisure activities because the people in charge don't ride bikes on weekends when they have to be at corporate events and competitions promoting and grand standing. The idea of guys building a bike for a market who are passionate and probably out riding with the people who are their customers. These are 2 entirely separate worlds that are incompatible but are fighting over the interests of the same people for different reasons. All of these awesome companies have been tricked into the allure of becoming bigger more popular companies and trickes into the belief of success is the North American market. If more companies could just be satisfied with not being large and just being passionate and satisfied with forming closer relations with their customers the world would be a must better place
I thought they used the ATK 500 frame and just swapped a Highland motor in it for that show, but maybe I was confused with the pictures since they showcased multiple bakes back then… good to know!
They also advertised a quad that looked to be the last attempt at resurrecting the Cannondale IP. Curious if that was an early concept when atk was still involved, since they were the last to produce Cannondale developed chassis.
All Swedish brands sounds kind of the same. So much passion going on and somehow the products seems more of the goal than the profit is. Would love to hear your take on Stark Future and their Varg. Although it won't have too much history, maybe just about the bike. I'll give it a good change that when you e-mail them and show you your channel they will let you use a demo bike for some time.
Why is it, that every time an up and coming motorcycle company is starting to take off, it crashes and burns, and Harley Davidson is somehow always involved?
Whole family's or the whole board of a company should never Fly together and this is the reason why. It's absolutely crazy that people never think what would happen if the plane crashes. Crazy
Patents have only a 20 year time frame. Once expired, anyone can take the engine designs and update under new proprietary patents. Doable, but who will do it in the US?
Just like an empty gas tank is more explosive than a full one. The fumes are highly explosive and there is always some fuel in the lines as well to burn.
12-20K for a custom bike built for you with top quality components and brute engines, would be very cheap. If it wasn't for the crash, KTM would order bombing.
Keep in mind this was 12-20k back in 2010, when all bikes were cheaper … but yes, I agree, the price could be justified for the right buyer assuming they were actually that good
@@KRANKiT 690 SMC R was around 10K and 990 Adventure was 15K in 2010. Still HL bikes were cheap. You would need thousands for such customization and quality parts. Imagine the 690 having ohlins suspension and not the apex lego crap. KTM would charge it 18K with no further customisation...
Maybe… but at such small scale, I don’t think people would ever consider tragedies like that when doing business decisions. They were still a startup after all
why does this guy only have 18k subs, his content is bomb he needs more!
Living in Sweden, this country never lacked in the engineering/idea department. It's always the business side that is the nail in the coffin. Just look at all the innovative companies that are no longer Swedish, or have gone extinct. Saab, Volvo, Sony Ericsson, Husqvarna, Husaberg and many more. It saddens me.
Volvo, SAAB and Ericsson all still exist and they're doing really well. Sony Ericsson still also exists, it's called Sony.
@@HatcheDWheeL Volvo cars is Chinese, Saab no longer makes cars and Sony is Japanese, so I really don't see your point.
Just look at GB exactly the same.
It's the Government that fcks it's own people.
For an extra buck they'll ruin homegrown businesses and push Chinese products.
Absolutely Crazy
@@davidboda46he's just joking/trying to be clever I hope
for sure… it kinda feels similar to the Husaberg story… in a way
I remember the Supermoto forum pages back then. In the US there was a lot of excitement for these things. I had an SM model as my desktop background. Then the plane crash happened and it was pretty much game over.
No way! Didn't expect to see you here! Watching your vids on YT as a kid is part of what got me into motorcycles
yeah, from reading the forums it seemed like the hype was real especially in the US. What I really appreciated was that there were people that got really interested after talking personally to the founders, it’s like everyone who met them in person suddenly gained a big bunch of trust in their future.
What a fascinating story. I'd never even heard of Highland until now, thanks for all the research and putting this together, a great video as always!
I was the operations manager at USH in Tulsa at the time of the incident.
oh damn… small world I guess. Just curious, if you can say, how close were the bikes to actually being delivered to customers in your opinion?
I remember applying for a job and taking a weld test there. The design was super interesting. I wanted the job pretty bad, but it wasn't to be.
Another fantastic piece of story telling, thankyou. Only another content creator will understand how much work you put into these. Well done Sir!
cheers mate!
another great video, thank you!
The Highland V2 was a bombshell, every real petrolhead on two wheels followed the developement of this bike and finally wanted to own one!
shut up, every "real" motocross enthusiast knew this was going to fail no matter what. Just like Cannondale and BMW - they thought they knew better than the establishment. VOR, Vertemati, Husaberg, all of them tried way to hard to reinvent the wheel.
Triumph, Beta, and Ducati will all be successful because they are not doing any of that nonsense. they are building Japanese style motocross bikes...as they should.
Highland wasn't even a flash in the pan...as the pan never even got hot. The engineering was flawed in every way. You wouldn't know that because you don't know shit... your just some dumbass average "dude" consumer who thinks thinks "cool" equals good. Cool does not equal good. Real racing machines require "real" engineering and development...not ideas.
I remember this company I was very excited and wanted to buy one. I sold two bikes I had to get ready for one just before the plane crash happened. The company did continue briefly and communicated with all of us potential buyers all the way to the end.
a brilliant and tragic story well told , thanks
As usual, excellent production and editing!!!! Great investigation! Very interesting story which I've never heard about! Thanks!!!
As always, well done.
How terrific it would be to custom order an Enduro motorcycle with such performance. My favorite motorcycle, which I should’ve kept, was a KTM 950 super Enduro. The Highlander would have been lighter with more power. A dream not to come true…
I have been completely ignorant of this story. Still I'm Swedish and have been riding bikes for twenty years, so I don't understand how I could have missed it. I remember being in my teens reading of the Folan engine, around 1990. I recall there was someone that had built something like a Swedish Ducati around a Folan V-twin, and I thought it was so cool. The engines looked so clean and minimalistic, beautiful pieces.
I knew it, I always had suspected that Harley Davidson had something to do with it. They just didn't want the competition.
That'd be crazy to say the least.
to be fair, HD didn’t really have much to do with it. That was simply John’s background
Awsome video as usual. I hate how things like this happen to awsome people and ideas, especially when they involve a new motorcycle company.
I would love to see you make a video on the Synergy Motorsports Q450.
I’ve never heard of that bike… but looks interesting, maybe one day!
Great video! If you do any more "aviation" based simulations in the future, I can help make them more accurate.
Thanks! I had to work with what I had, and tried to keep at least the idea of what happened to a decent accuracy, even though I couldn’t find the exact plane for example. I’ll keep that in mind though!
Well done video as always!
Heartbreaking ! The biggest problem with current motorcycle companies today is upper management that only cares about making money, not motorcycles. Case in point, Harley Davidson. The opposite, Royal Enfield, riders develop and make the product, every aspect of their motorcycles are rider experience focused.
Great content as always!
This was a real detailed and quality produced documentary. When there is an obvious bias of passion, this appeals to the audience because it plays on 'what could have been?' component that much of the documentary culture tries to avoid with factual unbias ambiguity......the human emotional element is quite possibly the most significant part to any story. Unfortunately the modem would has made attempts to dehumanise instead of customised; a notion of COTS (commercial of the shelf) "once size fits all" approach is diametrically opposed to what this company was attempting to offer?
It's actually sad when market leaders collude to stamp out opposing interests as they don't want those kinds of things becoming mainstream because they will need to adapt and that will cost them money and expands customers expectations. This became an issue when 3rd party American brands were developed and piggybacking a whole industry of customisations and upgraded performance parts. The industry doesn't want a factory bike with all the goods on it standard out of the box because the performance retailers then have nothing they can sell you that is an impediment over the factory offering or they struggle to offer a cheaper component of the same quality as the factory part just as an alternative?
Hop of a Japanese motocross bike of the 2000s compared to the likes of Husqvarna and it's like night and day. Never had I had a bike that had everything like performance brakes, braided lines, competition triple clamps bar risers monotube protaper style bars, performance pipe, quality oring chain, light weight and absolutely ballistic performance........
All of this was unacceptable to manufacturers until it had to become mainstream to keep up. Japanese bikes only began to do similar offerings but it became a walled garden approach with a consortium of brands for the Japanese initially to appease North America, because that's of course the marketing style of the US. The US will manipulate the motocross industry through rules that will exclude manufacturers from competing in the North American championships. We see it all the time and it's really nasty and disgusting tactics that actually really repulsive to the public.
We have these heros out there as brand ambassadors to brands that at their heart on North America as almost parasitic capitalism. Making money for moneys sake and then using that money to make sure nobody else can achieve what they have achieved.
This is repeated over and over throughout all of history and is comes come corruption of capitalism and opposes the core idea of free market capitalism and the idea of more competition is positive to the consumer?
What America was built on the beliefs it's culture developed into are opposing. Corporatism isn't free market capitalism in any way shape or form.
Their idea is that there shall be no more slices in ever increasing diameter economic pie.
Just the idea of their greed is incompatible with passion as it's only there for profitable reasons and doesn't care about the customer because that requires empathy and that doesn't work in the share market of ruthless investors who only care about money not about person riding the bike?
It's crap to think that the would believes they need to go to America to be successful when the American markets oppose competition. The more players the less control over the market and market share.
This company should have remained a bespoke bike company with just a loyal customer base that continued to support the people it had and just accepted that they wouldn't be accepted in competition in America. Build bikes for people to enjoy and not care about rider endorsements or televised publicity or anything like that? More demand would mean scaling up and that's not aligned with R&D and that's why manufacture segregated R&D and capped investment became they don't want the best they want what is the most profitable?
Even the idea of markets and money is opposed to the idea of riding bikes for leisure activities because the people in charge don't ride bikes on weekends when they have to be at corporate events and competitions promoting and grand standing. The idea of guys building a bike for a market who are passionate and probably out riding with the people who are their customers. These are 2 entirely separate worlds that are incompatible but are fighting over the interests of the same people for different reasons.
All of these awesome companies have been tricked into the allure of becoming bigger more popular companies and trickes into the belief of success is the North American market.
If more companies could just be satisfied with not being large and just being passionate and satisfied with forming closer relations with their customers the world would be a must better place
Nice work!!
Thanks!
Saving this for later 🧡
One would be foolish to believe they could deliver built to order bikes in a matter of days
I'd love a 500-600 cc V twin dual sport, like a Aprillia's XV family of bikes.
At 13:45 the documentary shows an ATK 500 and implies it is a Highland motorcycle; the bike shown is an ATK/Cannondale 500.
I thought they used the ATK 500 frame and just swapped a Highland motor in it for that show, but maybe I was confused with the pictures since they showcased multiple bakes back then… good to know!
They also advertised a quad that looked to be the last attempt at resurrecting the Cannondale IP. Curious if that was an early concept when atk was still involved, since they were the last to produce Cannondale developed chassis.
I saw that, although I can’t quite remember when that came into play…
I remember seeing the quad 2
All Swedish brands sounds kind of the same. So much passion going on and somehow the products seems more of the goal than the profit is.
Would love to hear your take on Stark Future and their Varg. Although it won't have too much history, maybe just about the bike. I'll give it a good change that when you e-mail them and show you your channel they will let you use a demo bike for some time.
Grande Fabrizio Meoni, descansa em Paz.
What a Great Fighter Grey Maynard was back in the day
It looked like a great idea,
The Name Highland sux for a motorcycle i don't know who came up with that.
Genius model to have all the models with 2 engines edit lol 😂😂😂same word you used
Did we not learn anything from the day the music died story?
..just another amazing story, thank you Sir. Go for president, whatever country you're part of, I'll vote for you. Miroslav
I think I’ll stick to bikes for now, but appreciate it :))
You call it engine failure when the pilot runs it out of fuel? I would have thought it to be a pilot error.
It was pilot error... I guess what I tried to convey is that both engines stopped functioning, and later I gave the whole fuel planning explanation.
May they all rest in peace.
Why is it, that every time an up and coming motorcycle company is starting to take off, it crashes and burns, and Harley Davidson is somehow always involved?
Whole family's or the whole board of a company should never
Fly together and this is the reason why.
It's absolutely crazy that people never think what would happen if the plane crashes.
Crazy
Why won’t someone else buy the rights for the engines. ???
Atk did, but atk has no capital.
Patents have only a 20 year time frame. Once expired, anyone can take the engine designs and update under new proprietary patents. Doable, but who will do it in the US?
Oh dam the boss's dead ! ( we aren't getting paid : quietly wheels bike out the back door)
How can there be a fireball if they run out off fuel?
Just like an empty gas tank is more explosive than a full one.
The fumes are highly explosive and there is always some fuel in the lines as well to burn.
As JagLite said, plus there are other flamable things and fluids on a plane other than the fuel
The engine price needs to drop under $500 or I will take all of your business . Enough said
I bet every rider put in expert rider 😂
12-20K for a custom bike built for you with top quality components and brute engines, would be very cheap. If it wasn't for the crash, KTM would order bombing.
Keep in mind this was 12-20k back in 2010, when all bikes were cheaper … but yes, I agree, the price could be justified for the right buyer assuming they were actually that good
@@KRANKiT 690 SMC R was around 10K and 990 Adventure was 15K in 2010. Still HL bikes were cheap. You would need thousands for such customization and quality parts. Imagine the 690 having ohlins suspension and not the apex lego crap. KTM would charge it 18K with no further customisation...
❤
snd yet they say planes are safer than cars
Why american motorcycle companies fail? Are there any niche manufacturers in the us/canada? Even BRP does not dare to try.
@gearloose703 there's Curtiss, but I don't think they will survive.
Very KTMesque.....
Motus motorcycles
The Clinton's got them.
Why were all 3 key figures on the same plane? Seems like poor risk management.
Maybe… but at such small scale, I don’t think people would ever consider tragedies like that when doing business decisions. They were still a startup after all
Unfortunately this world is not for dreamers.