What happened to Japanese motorcycle cruisers?
Vtx 1300-1800cc
Vulcan 1300-2000cc (nomad, meanstreak)
Vstar road star
There's no economically priced Harley competition since 2010.
The Suzuki m90 and m109r survived 2010
Wish Honda bring back vtx 1800
The bigger cruiser market is dieing, the millenial market wants smaller/cheaper bikes.
For a while there, there was a competition among Japanese mfgrs to have the biggest motor on a cruiser. I think either Honda or Yamaha had a 2000cc bike at one point.
But even in their day these bikes were 'niche market'. They would never sell very many of them. Japanese bike designs are usually very pragmatic and practical.
Have you ever seen a Boss Hoss? It's a motorcycle made with Chevy short-block V8 in it. They are just ridiculously fast but they weigh about 1000 pounds (maybe more!) and I think they're just ugly (just my own taste, of course). They look like a bike designed to prove a point. 8^) They can't be very easy or fun to ride, they're really just for 'bragging rights' (again, just my opinion. To each his own.) Yet here in California I've seen several of them!
A friend of mine had a Harley Softail for a while. I got to ride it a lot, and I did enjoy it, especially on a long highway trip. But there's no advantage in making a bike bigger than that, in fact the Softail itself could have been 200-399cc smaller and 100 lbs lighter and would have worked just as well.
Insufficient worldwide demand killed them off.
All of the "Big Four" Japanese motorcycle manufacturers ARE still making cruiser style motorcycles and selling them quite well in the USA. If you can't find new cruiser style bikes, you're not looking in the right places.
I'm not sure where in the world you are, but in the USA, today you can buy:
Honda Valkyrie
Honda Fury 1300
Honda 1300 Custom
Honda Shadow 750
Kawasaki Vulcan 650 (three models)
Kawasaki Vulcan 900 (three models)
Kawasaki Vulcan 1700
Suzuki Boulevard S40
Suzuki Boulevard C50 / C50T
Suzuki Boulevard C90 / C90T
Suzuki Boulevard M50
Suzuki Boulevard M90
Suzuki Boulevard M109
Yamaha Raider
Yamaha Stryker
Yamaha Bolt
Yamaha V-Star 250
Yamaha V-Star 950
Yamaha V-Star 1300
Cruisers have become far less popular, in the rest of the world, so the Big 4 really only sell them in America.
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