Roger Willis reviews registrations for the first nine months
The three quarters of 2024 to date have featured a sliding scale of motorcycling consumer reluctance to engage, for a variety of reasons. Attempts to fend off creeping weakness with what could have been a post-peak sales reward in September’s new-plate seasonal finale, through an urgent rash of discounting and seductively cheap finance, came far too late to make any impression. We have now entered the usual Q4 challenges ill-equipped, in a market which has already dropped by 3.8% to 87,429 units.
And the devil is in the detail. Dealer profitability is desperately thin. Inevitably narrow mobility/fleet margins in our biggest 51-125cc sector have shrunk by 7.4% to 27,615. That’s 2215 fewer budget units sold.
Growth has been exclusive to the booming 126-500cc sector, 20.4% up at 16,434, adding a 2780 headcount. But it’s been a deeply budget-oriented proposition as well, driven by Triumph’s spectacular introduction of competitively-priced, single-cylinder 400cc models claiming responsibility. Royal Enfield, having overcome issues associated with taking distribution in-house from Moto GB during the previous year, was supposed to own this plot, but Triumph intervention stole the show, as Speed 400 and Scrambler 400X numbers headed for the magic 3000-unit marker by the end of Q3.
Then it was all downhill. The 501-750cc sector fell by 6.4% to 10,817, losing 743 sales, and 751-1000cc was 8.7% down to 15,583, a 1484-unit shortfall. And worse still, a fairly large proportion of the bikes that were selling represented an influx of lower-priced twins rather than premium kit. Finally, arriving at 1000cc-plus offerings hopefully calling for muscular margins, the higher end declined by 10.6%, 1688 units absent, to 14,219. Altogether, 3915 units had gone missing from the market above 501cc compared to the same period for the previous year.
No wonder manufacturers have quietly abandoned early-season optimism loaded with plentiful inventory and are now pressurising dealers to shift showroom dust-gatherers by any means at hand. As our MCIA-based brand chart highlights, Honda and Yamaha are both more than 7% adrift year-on-year. BMW Motorrad’s UK outpost was marginally positive at the halfway point of 2024 but has now slipped into negativity. The target set by its masters in Munich last year, of achieving 10,000 units annually, is probably out of reach. KTM’s plunge is a reflection of not only wider woes afflicting its Austrian parent Pierer Mobility Group, but also a surfeit of obsolescent stock, for which its outlets are struggling to find buyers. Even Triumph’s good fortune is based on a foray into minimalist-margin territory.
Against such a background, Kawasaki deserves applause. And so does Chinese champion Lexmoto. The brand’s 2024 nine-month tally is approximately 40% up on performance in the same period last year. But BDN’s number cruncher couldn’t be precise, because the brand missed one monthly MCIA chart presence in Q1 2023. Suzuki also failed to make a solitary Q1 2023 chart visit. Sadly, though, that contributed to our arbiter pointing in the opposite direction – revealing Suzuki’s 2024 nine-month total was about 23% lower.
The most worrying facet has become a recent dealership attrition rate surfacing in the pages of BDN. Shuttered showrooms and the disappearance of long-established enterprises are gaining frequency. Unfortunately, you may be reading about some of them elsewhere in this magazine.
Manufacturer performance (YOY)
- Honda 16,570 -7.1%
- Triumph 9805 +26.3%
- Yamaha 9566 -7.3%
- BMW Motorrad 7809 -2.5%
- Kawasaki 5237 +2.8%
- KTM 4178 -19.8%
- Royal Enfield 4024 -1.9%
- Lexmoto 3842 N/A*
- Suzuki 3371 N/A*