The dealer database is just WRONG, I don’t understand why!!!

Debbie and I took an 890 mile weekend ride over the 4th of July holiday. It was here that a VERY surprising weakness with the built in GPS appeared. The motorcycle GPS has a database of HD dealers. During our ride I selected Freedom HD (Canton, OH) from the list of local dealerships in the GPS and we rolled out.

After about a 15 minute ride the GPS announced that we had reach our destination “on the right”. “Technically” it was correct, Freedom HD was on the right, but we were in the middle of the interstate and the dealership was about 300 yards, a large ditch, a fence and another roadway away. It was no better when we attempted to go to Adventure HD. You could see the dealership as we traveled down the interstate but, the GPS lady directed us in the opposite direction when we hit the exit. Following her directions we ended up in the parking lot of a Sheetz gas station.

Thank you for using the crazy GPS lady tours of eastern Ohio, my name is Harley I hope you had a good time.

Not only did it fail to find these two dealerships, it also failed to find Steel City HD on our trip home, placing the shop about a mile away on the wrong side of the road. We only found this store because there was no place to turn around along the road. To give the GPS system database of dealerships some credit it did find Valley HD and Neidengard’s HD with no issue. This is a brand new 2014 Ultra Limited with the most current software load. To only find 2 out of 5 dealerships listed in the database is poor quality control at best and plain stupid at worst.

Another weakness of the database is how the dealers are displayed. At one point in the trip I thought let’s see what dealers are in the area… when I went to the database everything displayed as “Harley Davidson of” that’s it, just “Harley Davidson of”.

Now the reason for that is that all the dealers in that area were Harley Davidson of XXX city. With a lot of the dealers named in that manner it would take some effort to make them display in a manner that was usable to the rider. There may be a way to see the entire name, but it is it was not an easy to find selection.

So, I state with some energy, the GPS in the new Rushmore motorcycles is crazy in the head, the head unit that is!

All in all I have to give the bike a big thumbs up over the 2011 model. Yes there are some weaknesses, but there is no reason that HD cannot overcome them, IF THEY DESIRE TO. That last part is what worries me. Are they going to leave are GPS and other items as is or are they going to make our rides better? I have no idea.

You can read part 4 of the review here!