U.S. MOTORCYCLE SALES, 1992-2014: They do a good job over at webbikeworld.com with their annual “US Motorcycle Sales” graph and survey.
The obvious picture is that overall annual motorcycle sales are slowly recovering from a big fall that started going down before the recession and then dramatically fell with the recession.
What this graph does not show is that off-road bikes made the biggest advance in 2013-2014 (10.9%), while dual-purpose and street motorcycles made modest gains at 3% and 3.6% respectively. Only one of the four noted categories represented by this graph was down compared to 2013, and that was scooters.
Total U.S. motorcycle sales were 465,783 for 2013 and 483,526 for 2014, which represents a 3.8% increase.
[graph updated May 1, 2015]
4 year old chart is out dated to ponder anything …up date the sales chart .. then compare o7-o8-o9-1o-11-…. its not rocket science ..
I agree. A bike that weighs 550 lbs. or more and has basically street tires should not be called dual-sport or dual anything. Even Adventure bikes has gotten out of control. I have been riding 45 years and seen trendy names come and go; But to imply a heavy bike with street tires is “ready to go where the pavement ends” is going to send a lot of riders where they will have a great adventure–the hospital. I have always ridden dual purpose bikes from 250cc to 650cc. They were all decent enough to tackle the roughest jeep roads but not all single tracks. When I bought a BMW R100GS, it weighed about 460 lbs. and had Metzler Sahara tires. Did OK on easy dirt rides and excellent on street.. Also bought the first KTM Adventure (650) that weighed much less and had the same tires.Did great on dirt but vibration on street was terrible. These were the limits in my opinion for Adventure bikes. Where a motorcycle can go depends mainly on two factors, tires and weight. You can compensate some for weight with knobby tires but street tires and heavy weight we always called street bikes. In the old days there were 3 classes (not counting race bikes), off road, dual purpose and street. I bought one of Honda’s “scramble” motorcycles, the CL350 which was a CB350 with a high pipe. It was aptly named though. My first off road ride scrambled me enough to end up in the ER.
Some of the increase could be because the Dual Sports (and I’m including the Adventure machines here) are just about the closest thing left to the “standard” motorcycle. I have the opportunity to ride both sport bikes and cruisers from time to time, and every time reaffirms my choice to buy a V Strom! I just can’t say enough about the versatility of that bike!
What do you consider a dual purpose motorcycle?
Good question Leatherman. I prefer to differentiate Dual-Purpose (650cc and smaller) from Adventure bikes (650cc and bigger). But I suspect the cited statistic includes both. MCg
This is a strange trend indeed, given that the population and until very recently, the economy, have been growing steadily, It certainly raises the question as to why bike sales have dropped..
Hmm I notice the biggest drop is in offroad bikes. This could possibly be partially due to closing down of riding areas and stricter offroad access. I can see that.
I wonder if the fall in street bikes could be a demographic thing. I notice a lot of riders are my age (52) and older. And we aren’t getting any younger. Has biking lost its appeal to younger folk? Is this a generational thing? Maybe bikes aren’t cool anymore..
As for the scooters thing, that has got to be for gas miserly effect plus girls plus metrosexuals plus wannabe eurofashion victims (if you really want to go Euro there is always KTM and BMW you don’t have to get a scooter…)..
Well I have never really followed the crowd. Especially the younger crowd so that is fine with me, after all lots of young folk like rap music so go figure.. LOL