THE ROAD

…I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost (1874–1963)

It wasn’t in a wood where the two roads diverged. More likely it was a boardroom at H-D headquarters in Milwaukee, one filled with cigarette smoke and middle-aged guys in suits and maybe a butt-filled Styrofoam coffee cup or three.

Unlike the suits in that room, the late poet Robert Frost couldn’t have known the gravity of the decision facing that handful of stern-faced company managers — but it was very

In 1981, Harley-Davidson was on the verge of launching an entire range of liquid-cooled V-engined cruisers and tourers — called Nova — in hopes of rejuvenating itself. It never happened, which almost certainly saved the company from extinction — and paved the way for otherworldly success during the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s.