POG booth at Progressive International MC Show

[Paul Danik]

Greetings,

POG members from Michigan, Mars and points between are off to the Progressive International Motorcycle Show being held this weekend at the IX Center, just outside of Cleveland, Ohio.

This morning we will be putting our display together starting at about 9am, the show opens today at 4pm. This year we have a 20 X 40 foot island display area, the largest yet for us at this show. The link below will take you to the show's website for any and all info about the show.  http://www.motorcycleshows.com/cleveland

If you are within driving range please feel free to stop by the display and join with us as we tell the Penton story.  We have some motorcycles in this years display that we have never before had the opportunity to display and we are very excited to see the response of the shows attendees. Our displays tend to encompass the broad spectrum of motorcycles that had an effect on the development of the Penton Sportcycle and that entire era, as well as the Penton Sportcycles themselves.

Hope to see you at the show...it is worth the trip just to ride the indoor Ferris Wheel that takes you literately through the roof!

Paul

[Wardie]

Paul,  you and the POG members did an awesome job setting up the POG display. How cool the NSU and R27! Works done with interviews set up will head back up Sunday and help out. Larry

[Paul Danik]

Larry,
Thanks for the kind words and for all the good things that you, and your radio show, have done for the motorcycling as well as for the POG.

To all,

Saturday at the IX Center was unbelievable, the place was wall to wall attendees from the opening of the show to well into the evening. The  lines at the many ticket windows appeared to have 25 - 30 folks constantly moving towards the ticket buying windows. The aisles were filled with folks and the entire place was abuzz, I have never seen such activity at this show and numerous long time vendors and attendees also echoed those sentiments.

Our booth is filled with quite a mix of equipment, and numerous folks took the time to express their gratitude to the POG for their efforts, many stating that the machinery and items displayed took them back to their youth and for what many said was the best times of their motorcycling lives.

Numerous folks would tell their stories of watching young Jack Penton and his brothers Jeff and Tom, as well as cousin Dane Leimbach show up at their local events, "back in the day" ,and proceed to show just how fast those Pentons could go! When Jack would be pointed out to many of them they would just light up and head over towards their hero, some spending a long time getting reacquainted and telling tales of days gone by. As always, John Penton was the main attraction, but Jack held his own against the headliner at the POG booth:)

Besides the NSU and the BMW that Larry mentioned, one of the other big draws was the ISDT Cheney Triumph that Dale Fisher displayed. It is an absolutely beautiful machine and provided folks with a glimpse of the era before the Penton lightweights hit the scene. A big thanks to all who helped in any way in putting the display together, supplying machinery and manning the booth. There is still one more day to go...

Paul

[tooclose racing]

Great job, Paul (and team) - I had some friends/family travel from upstate NY to the Cleveland show and they said it was great.  They sent me photos of your bikes and display.  And the Ducati exhibit girls.  God bless 'em....

Unfortunately - from an industry sales standpoint - I had a friend in the business tell me that street bike and dirt bike sales are just abysmal and one of the reasons why we are seeing so little factory support (beyond professional SX and MX outdoors) in American racing.  Which is hard for me to believe when I 1)see the huge turn-outs at our local modern MX and XC races up here, and 2)see that KTM continues to just go all out in their bike development, diversity, and racing involvement.  

Would like to see a good, recent article on "the state of the state" in motorcycle sales if any of you can point to something.

[firstturn]

Your request Bob.  


January 31, 2014 - (Press release edited by webBikeWorld) - The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association just released its report for motorcycle production in the 2013 calendar year.

Number of Motorcycles Produced

Motorcycle production for Calendar Year 2013 (January 2013 to December 2013) was recorded as 563,169 units. Compared with the 595,473 units total recorded for the previous year, this is a decrease of 32,304 units or 5.4%, and production decrease for three consecutive years.

Number of Motorcycle Domestic Sales

Domestic sales (factory shipments) for Calendar Year 2013 stood at 419,398 units, an increase of 4.4% and the increase after last year's of downturn.

Motorcycle exports were down 10.1% as compared with last year.


You can see a breakdown of charts at this link:

http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-news/statistics/motorcycle-sales-statistics.htm

Ron Carbaugh

[tooclose racing]

Thanks, Ron.  Sincerely.

[Dale Fisher]

I'm still trying to recover from the weekend, collect my thoughts on the first visit, and deal with the five to six inches of snow that fell at home while away.  Good grief, another four to six predicted tomorrow.  Did assemble my limited collection of photos from the weekend.  Thanks to all!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79756468@N06/sets/72157640456918175/


Dale Fisher
Penton Owners Group - Memberships
Facebook - Cheney Twinshock Racing Group - Administrator

'70 Six-Day 125 - V2017
'71 Six-Day 125 (Dave Fisher's) - V5553
'72 Mudlark - W257
'73 Jackpiner - 175 21159727
'74 Berkshire 100 - 40171056
And some silly other bikes...

[Dale Fisher]

It was a great experience having attended this event for the first time.  "Difficult" would be the best description on remembering all of the great stories and comments from the visitors.  The following photo was spotted in a recent magazine I received and ties in well with John's BMW that was on display.



Dale Fisher
Penton Owners Group - Memberships
Facebook - Cheney Twinshock Racing Group - Administrator

'70 Six-Day 125 - V2017
'71 Six-Day 125 (Dave Fisher's) - V5553
'72 Mudlark - W257
'73 Jackpiner - 175 21159727
'74 Berkshire 100 - 40171056
And some silly other bikes...

[Paul Danik]

This years display took a slightly different approach than those of past years, and for several reasons.

Booth size. About a week before the show we were contacted by show management with an offer of a 40 X 20 booth instead of a 30 X 20 booth, after a millisecond of deep thought we agreed to the larger booth..

Machine selection. Some may question why a Penton Owners Group display would contain machines other than Pentons, and that is a fair question. The logic behind our machine selection is two fold, first  off we could very easily line up a selection of beautiful Pentons each year for all to see, but we feel that after a couple of years that type of display would fail to attract the every year attendee to our booth, as it would become rather mundane to those folks. We also do feel that each machine displayed has a Penton connection in some way.

Numerous folks enter the POG booth just to look at the NSU, as an example. Then they ask, " why is an NSU in a Penton display", then the stories start to flow.

Another unique feature about our display this year was the ability of folks to just wander into the display and look at, and even touch the motorcycles. Credit for this feature goes to Jack Penton, and it sure did work out well. What can't be seen in Dale's photos is how the booth looked when filled with folks, in was simply incredible to see the booth space packed with folks who openly expressed their gratitude.

Once again, thanks to all who supplied machines, worked the booth during the show, or helped in any way with the display.

Also, THANK YOU very much to the Progressive International Motorcycle Show for inviting the Penton Owners Group to be a part of your show

Paul