U.S. MOTORCYCLE SALES, 1992-2008
They do a good job over webbikeworld.com with their annual “Motorcycle Sales” graph and survey. Yesterday they updated their “U.S. Motorcycle Sales, 1992 – 2008.”
Although the obvious picture is that overall annual sales are going down, what this graph does not show is that dual-purpose motorcycles are still the fastest growing motorcycle segment for at least 4 years running, at the same time that the overall sales have passed a peak.
DUAL-PURPOSE MOTORCYCLE SALES
2004: 22,908
2005: 29,610 +29.26%
2006: 35,245 +19.0%
2007: 36,837 +6.7%.
2008: 45,250 +22.8%
2008 MOTORCYCLE SALES BY CATEGORY
| 2007 Totals | 2008 Totals | Unit Change | % Change | |
| Dual Sport | 36,837 | 45,250 | 8,413 | +22.8% |
| Off Road | 209,739 | 146,779 | -62,960 | -30.0% |
| Street Bikes | 647,633 | 611,133 | -36,500 | -5.6% |
| Scooters | 54,255 | 76,748 | 22,493 | +41.5% |
| Totals | 948,464 | 879,910 | -68,554 | -7.2% |
And not surprising, scooter sales are another segment of rising sales.
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!
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
What do you consider a dual purpose motorcycle?
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