What’s going on in UK motorcycling: January 2025

The Status of UK Motorcycling – January 2025

“Challenging.” It’s a word that crops up again and again as motorcycling organisations, manufacturers, dealers, riders’ groups and political organisations look back over 2024 and into 2025.

As we push forward into the new year – still in the depths of winter and with riding season still feeling a long way off – the same term looks set to remain firmly in the lexicon for a while yet.

When we last looked at the state of UK motorcycling in summer 2024, the General Election dominated the news cycle with the prospect of an change in leadership after several increasingly tumultuous years under Conservative rule. Now the new Labour government has had several months to settle in and it’s clear there are no quick fixes or easy solutions in the pipeline. Meanwhile, on a global scale, problems including the ongoing war in Ukraine, high fuel costs, increasing international trading tensions stoked by planned tariffs from the incoming Trump administration in the USA, wobbles in the Chinese economy, high inflation and interest rates are adding to the problems for both businesses and individuals.

So how is motorcycling faring these stormy seas? Read on to find out.

It was replaced by the R 1300 GS Adventure in mid-2024 but BMW’s old R 1250 GS Adventure was still a best-seller last year

New motorbike sales figures

A last-gasp boost in bike sales during December 2024 meant that after tracking below 2023 figures for most of the year, 2024’s full-year motorcycle sales in the UK are surprisingly up slightly compared to the previous year.

At the end of November, after 11 months of trading, the market was down 2.9% on 2023’s sales, but the huge boost of sales in December, traditionally a slow month for bike dealers, results in a final total for 2024 that’s 2.5% higher than the previous year.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that December’s high sales volume, up an incredible 114% on the same month in 2023, marks a sudden growth in motorcycling as a whole. Instead it’s down to deep discounting and the preregistration of unsold bikes. Why? Because the Euro5+ emissions rules came into force on 1st January 2025. Any unsold new bike that doesn’t comply wouldn’t be able to be sold after that date unless the model is granted derogation (special allowance used to give time to sell existing stocks that don’t comply with emissions rules) or it’s registered using Single Vehicle Approval. The solution? Sell that non-Euro5+ stock at knock-down prices or preregister the bikes and sell delivery-mileage machines as ‘used’ stock.

There were serious bargains to be found in December, pushing up those sales, and it’s likely that if you’re interested in a new bike that doesn’t have the latest Euro5+ changes – which are actually quite minor and relate to the longevity and monitoring of emissions equipment rather than tighter emissions limits – you’ll be able to find a preregistered model at a tempting price in the early part of 2025.

Tony Campbell, CEO of the MCIA, explains: “The slight growth in the market is purely a result of unusual registration activity and not an indication of growth. 2024 has been an incredibly challenging year for the sector, with several dealer closures and rising pressure on businesses to maintain positive cashflow to ride out the next few months.    
“The Motorcycle and Scooter sector has historically fared challenging market conditions well, and whilst the current economic circumstances are concerning, I am confident the sector will adjust quickly again, and no doubt be leaner and fitter as a result.”

Triumph’s Speed 400 has vied for the top-seller spot, reflecting a renewed interest in smaller-capacity bikes

What are the most popular new bikes?

The official DfT and DVLA figures that give a granular breakdown of all the new vehicles that are registered tend to lag a few months behind the headline sales figures released by the Motorcycle Industry Association. That means the latest numbers available at the time of writing only cover the first six months of 2024 but even so they hint that there’s a significant shift underway in the type of new bikes that are being sold.

The numbers for Q1 and Q2 of 2024 reveal that while the fight to be the outright best-selling powered two-wheeler on the UK market is as tight as ever between the usual two 125cc scooter protagonists – Honda’s PCX125 and Yamaha’s NMAX 125 – the order among ‘real’ bikes is starting to look a little different, with a growing number of buyers opting for smaller-capacity machines.

In terms of outright sales there’s hardly a cigarette paper between the PCX and NMAX going by the first-half figures for 2024. The former just had the edge at the year’s halfway point, with 1793 new registrations compared to 1706 of the Yamahas, but it could go either way when the full year’s numbers are released.

But when we strip out the learner-legal, sub-125cc offerings, the picture starts to change. In the first half of 2024 BMW’s R1250GS Adventure, which has become accustomed to topping the charts, along with its predecessors, over the last 20 years, still clung onto the number one spot, but it faced a serious challenge from a newcomer in the form of Triumph’s Speed 400, which managed to outperform the new BMW R1300GS, sitting in third place on the chart. Another Triumph, the closely related Scrambler 400X, sat in fourth position with just 100 fewer sales than the big BMW ahead of it.

All four are well clear of the fifth-place best-seller over 125cc, Triumph’s Tiger 900GT Pro. Notably, 2023’s big-selling Honda CB750 Hornet, which was in third place in the 2023 ‘over 125cc’ list, has slipped back to 11th, while new entries include Royal Enfield’s Meteor 350 and Himalayan 452 as well as Honda’s own ADV350.

The full top 10 2024 best-selling motorcycles at the halfway point, according to DVLA registrations, was:

Meanwhile, the top-10 list of best-sellers over 125cc was as follows:

That ‘big bikes’ list is notable, as it shows there are five sub-500cc single-cylinder machines in the top 10, and by the time the full year’s figures are available there’s a genuine possibility that one of them – the Triumph Speed 400 – could emerge as the outright best-seller. Contrast that to 2023’s equivalent list, which only featured two sub-500cc bikes, Royal Enfield’s HNTR 350 and Classic 350, and it looks like a genuine shift towards smaller-engined, cheaper bikes is underway.

There are some factors worth noting here, too. You’ll spot that it’s the old BMW R1250GS Adventure, not the new R1300GS Adventure, which tops the list – the latter wasn’t announced until July, but the fact it was coming was common knowledge, as the base R1300GS has been available since late 2023. While that knowledge might have dented R1250GS Adventure sales, BMW also spent 2024 offering some extremely tempting deals on the old bike to clear the path for its replacement and as a result, the 1,324 of them that were registered in the first half of the year is nearly 80% of the same bike’s full year registrations in 2023 (1,697).

The shift towards smaller bikes means that while the outright new bike sales for 2024 in the UK were only fractionally down on the numbers for 2023, customers have been spending less money on those new bikes. Their affordable price is the big draw, after all, along with factors including an ageing demographic of riders, with many becoming increasingly disillusioned by the unusably high performance and excessive weight of big, litre-plus machines. Smaller bikes also tend to win when it comes to ancillary costs like servicing and insurance, which means that even though outright motorcycle sales in 2024 have only dropped by a relatively small percentage compared to 2023, the amount of money that customers have spent may have fallen more substantially. That has knock-on impacts when it comes to things like profit margins for dealers and manufacturers, as we’ll see…

European sales have risen slightly (image via ACEM)

How do European bike sales compare to the UK?

Figures from the major European motorcycle markets show that the UK has fared worst among the five biggest biking nations in terms of outright sales. Numbers from ACEM, the European motorcycle manufacturers’ association, for the first nine months of 2024 reveal that during that time the UK market dropped by 4% compared to the same portion of 2023, while the overall European motorcycle market – excluding mopeds – rose by 1.3%.

Of the five biggest markets, which between them account for around 80% of all new bikes sold in the EU+UK area, France and Germany also saw drops of 2.2% and 2.7% respectively, while Italy and Spain achieved strong growth, 5.3% and 6.1%.

When the full figures for 2024 come in it’s likely that other European markets will show a last-minute hike in registrations, as they all had the same end-of-year deadline as the UK to clear non-Euro5+ models from sale.

One thing that’s clear across all those markets is that electric motorcycles are still failing to make any substantial impact – and in fact have been in decline over the last couple of years. In the UK, between January and September, electric bikes were down a hefty 14.9% on the same part of 2023, which itself suffered a 33.7% drop compared to 2022. In Germany, the decline is even more noticeable, with 2024’s January-September numbers for electric bikes down a remarkable 45.8%. In Italy they’re down 29.9% and in Spain they dropped 24%. Only France, where electric bikes already sell better than anywhere else in Europe, has there been growth, by a mere 2%, but even there, sales had declined by 14.7% in 2023, so 2022 remains a peak.

That’s going to be unwelcome news to the large number of bike companies, including Honda and Kawasaki, which have made bold promises as to the number of electric bikes they’ll be selling in the near future.

The Completely Motorbikes chain hit the rocks

Dealers closing across the UK as margins shrink

Wherever you live in the country there’s a pretty good chance that one of the notable bike dealers in your region closed its doors in 2024 as several dealer groups and individual outlets hit the financial rocks.

In October, Completely Motoring, the car and bike dealer chain that owned the Completely Motorbikes shops in Worcester, Hinckley, Abergele, Chester, Worcester and Yeovil, went into administration alongside its sister company, Thunder Road Motorcycles, with outlets in Bridgend, Cwmbran and Gloucester. The group had franchises for Honda, Triumph, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Ducati, and the administrator’s report says that its problems began in late 2023 with rising interest rates and reduced customer demand.

The Pidcock Motor Cycles chain appointed an administrator in October, and Marsh Holdings, with dealers in Plymouth, Southampton and Exeter, followed suit in December.

Pidcock’s administrator proposal document, published on Companies House in December, is particularly clear on the reasons for the problems, saying “The company is solely reliant on activity in the motorcycle sector. Its income is seasonal in nature, being busy in spring and summer and quiet in autumn and winter. Income is predominantly generated from bike sales, servicing and repairs and ancillary sales (e.g. clothing or accessories). Customers generally have alternative means of transport and ride motorbike in fair weather for enjoyment. The recent poor weather over spring and summer has reduced activity levels and, with economic pressures, customers have been more mindful to minimise their levels of discretionary spending.

“Where customers do retain disposable income, they often seek to upgrade bikes to a newer model. Over the past year, Ducati have released one model, the release of which was delayed for several months, and Triumph have only issued two low capacity (400cc) models which generate low margin, which has adversely affected motorcycle sales.”

The report goes on to say that two of the company’s stock funders were withdrawing from the sector and needed to be repaid by the end of 2024, and it was not deemed feasible to continue trading in administration.

KTM in administration

It’s not just dealers that have been through the wringer in 2024. KTM, Europe’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer, entered self-administration in November to get 90 days of grace to find a solution to its financial woes and agree a plan with its creditors.

Self-administration, under Austrian law, gives a company protection from its creditors, like administration proceedings in the UK, but allows the existing management to remain in control during that time. It gives the company three months to come up with a plan, agreed with a majority of creditors.

AKV Europa, an Austrian creditor protection association, put out a press release about KTM’s creditors’ meeting at the regional court of Ried im Innkreis, and put KTM’s insolvency down to a combination of a high level of investment made in the last two years, largely based on borrowed capital, combined with increased production that wasn’t matched by sales at dealers. KTM experienced a significant boost in sales during and immediately after the Covid 19 pandemic, prompting investment new models and increased production, but in 2024 sales have slowed, leading to a large number of unsold bikes in inventory and a cashflow shortage.

Proposals in the restructuring plan, which is expected to be agreed by creditors at the end of January, are said to include repaying 30% of the money owed to creditors over a period of two years, as well as withdrawing from MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 in 2026 and halting production in January and February to help reduce the backlog of unsold bikes.

The company is also believed to be looking for substantial new funds, with existing partner brands CFMOTO in China, which has joint venture with KTM to manufacture the ‘790’ twin-cylinder bikes, and Bajaj in India, which builds the ‘390’ single-cylinder machines, heading the list of likely investors. Bajaj already holds a large, 37% stake in KTM’s parent company, Pierer Mobility AG. Another mooted investor is Hong Kong-based FountainVest, an investment group with Chinese and European interests including Amer Sports, parent to sporting brands including Wilson and Salomon.

Initially, the companies in self-administration were KTM AG (the main part of KTM), KTM Forschungs & Entwicklungs (research and development) GmbH and KTM Components GmbH. However, the Pierer Mobility group holds multiple other companies and some of those are also starting to be drawn into the same position. In January, Pierer subsidiary Avocado GmbH, a software company that provides services to KTM, also filed for self-administration.

Inevitably, KTM’s problems have thrown the spotlight onto other motorcycle companies. After all, most experienced a similar set of circumstances in terms of demand in the wake of the Covid pandemic, and operate in the same, largely stagnant, European bike market in 2024. At the moment, it doesn’t appear that others are approaching the same level of difficulty as KTM, though.

Looking at other large European bike brands, Audi’s Q3 2024 report showed that in the first nine months of 2024, Ducati’s production declined by 2.9% compared to the same period in 2023, dropping from 46,372 bikes to 45,010, while deliveries to customers in the same period dropped by 8.5% from 47,856 to 43,773. Revenue dropped from €877 million to €792 million and operating profit declined 31.9% from €140 million to €95 million. However, those numbers still show a strong return on sales of 12%, albeit not as impressive as the 15.9% Ducati enjoyed during the first nine months of 2023.

BMW’s position is similar. Its motorcycle deliveries in January-September 2024 stood at 163,436, down from 164,908 in the same part of 2023, with revenue up slightly from €2,571 to €2,563 in the same period. Profit, however, was down 21.1% from €308 million to €243 million because the margins on bikes are lower than they were.

Triumph’s accounts for the year ending 30 June 2024 show that while the British brand’s production and sales are substantially up thanks to the launch of the Speed 400 and Scrambler 400X – both wildly successful in terms of sales – its operating profit margin has dropped. Overall in the year ending 30 June 2024, Triumph wholesaled 108,436 bikes, up from 88,607 in the previous year, but revenue dropped from £703 million to £693 million. Triumph’s Strategic Report, filed with Companies House, put the reduction in revenue down to changes in exchange rates, particularly the downturn of the Chinese market, making pound stronger, as well as the “successful launch of the Speed 400 and Scrambler 400X which sell at a lower price point than other Triumph products.”

LFC700 tops the new Chinese-made Benda range heading to UK dealers this year

New motorcycle brands in the UK

China’s motorcycle industry has been undergoing a transformation in the last few years with an ever-increasing number of convincing-looking machines emerging from the country’s bamboozling array of brands. Over here they’ve yet to make a huge impact but more of their offerings are becoming available in the UK, with Benda joining the fray for 2025 after importer MotoGB adopted the brand.

We’ve been reporting on Benda’s creations since 2020, when the unfortunately-titled company (there’s talk of rebranding as BD Moto for the UK) showed its LF-01 concept bike with a 676cc four-cylinder engine and a massive 310-section rear tyre. That machine hit production in 2021 as the LFC700 and leads the company’s charge into the UK market in 2025. Even more than four years after the concept version was shown, the LFC700 remains a head-turner, and while its UK price of £9499 isn’t as tempting as its Chinese market tag (equivalent to around £5200), it’s still promising an intriguing level of tech and styling that’s sure to grab plenty of attention.

In UK spec, the company claims 78hp from the 676cc inline four, which is a bit less than the 93hp quoted for the Chinese version, but it still has Brembo brakes and KYB suspension, allied to a cast alloy frame and that vast 310/35-18 rear tyre. Whether we eventually get the ‘Pro’ version of the bike that’s sold in China with features including air suspension and a pair of pop-up auxiliary lights, one each side of the tank remains to be seen.

However, the cheaper offerings in the Benda range are likely to be more appealing, attracting customers who want V-twin cruisers without the size or cost usually associated with such machines. The UK range starts with the learner-legal RKV125 at £3499 and V Cruise 125C at £4499, stepping up to the 298cc V-Cruise 302C at £4799. Then there are two 475cc V-twin models, the Chinchilla 500 for £5299 and the NapoleonBob 500, an appealing-looking single-seat bobber, for £5699. Undercutting the Honda Rebel 500 in terms of price, while offering kit including a TFT dash and unusual cowled forks that give the look of a girder front end, the NapoleonBob 500 – hitting dealers in April – could be a tempting option.

There could be more on the way, too, as in China Benda’s range includes V4-powered models – a 500cc cruiser and a newly-launched 950cc version – with plans for an even bigger 1200cc variant in the future.

Also coming in April 2025 via MotoGB is the new Morbidelli range, previously shown under the MBP name, headed by the T1002VX adventure bike and its more street-oriented T1002V sibling. Each using a 997cc V-twin with 88.5hp, they undercut most similarly-sized rivals in terms of price, the more expensive VX starting at £8699, the V at £8499. Like the Bendas, the Morbidellis are Chinese-made, rooted in the Qianjiang group that also owns Keeway, Benelli and QJMotor.

Fixing potholes is a priority that can’t happen soon enough

Bikes in politics

Back when we reported on each political party’s plan for motorcycles before last summer’s General Election, we noted that Labour was silent on the topic of bikes ahead of the vote. Six months on from Labour’s landslide win there’s still a distinct lack of clarity but it’s clear that Labour doesn’t want to rock the boat by giving a minority like motorcyclists much in the way of preferential treatment.

In November there was a blow to motorcycling when the Government announced that universal access for motorcycles to bus lanes in the UK as a default position would not be adopted. That’s something that the Conservatives had specifically guaranteed in their manifesto, and had been subject to a consultation between March and July 2024, garnering 14,000 responses – almost all supporting the idea of allowing bikes to use bus lanes. Only 178 respondents disagreed with the idea of making it the default position.

The decision not to change the status quo, whereby individual local authorities are able to decide whether or not motorcycles are allowed in bus lanes, leading to a huge amount of confusion as the rules change from place to place, was met with dismay, as was the DfT’s statement that “the government has no policy to encourage greater use of motorcycles.”

Later the same month, though, the Government put out a call for ideas to help develop a national transport strategy, including specific references to motorcycles, which you can contribute to here (the closing date is 30th January, so get a move on).

The government, or at least the former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh who resigned from that position late last year, have also indicated that they are planning to introduce legislation to govern e-scooters. Depending on what form that legislation takes – and it’s unlikely to be clear in the near future – it could be beneficial to motorcycling. For instance, the adoption of a form of licensing, insurance and registration for e-scooters and e-bikes would narrow the gap between them and motorcycles, creating a natural pathway from e-scooters to mopeds, scooters and motorcycles.

More welcome news comes in the form of the DfT’s plan, revealed just before Christmas, to pour £1.6 billion into council funds in England for road repairs during 2025/26. That money is said to be enough to fix more than seven million potholes. It’s an increase of nearly 50% for local road maintenance, and is split across the nation, with £327 million for the Northwest, North East, Yorkshire and Humber, £372 million for the East Midlands and West Midlands, £244 million for the East of England, £322 million for the South East and London, and £300 million for the South West.

To ensure the money isn’t frittered away, 25% of the funds are being withheld until authorities can prove they’re delivering results and carrying out preventative work to stop potholes from forming in the first place rather than just fixing existing ones. AA president Edmund King said: “We urge councils to focus on permanent and innovative repairs rather than adopting a ‘patch and run’ approach. Better maintenance of the road network is the number one concern of drivers as damage costs a fortune and potholes can be fatal for those on two wheels.”

While it might seem that there are seven million potholes between your house and the local shops, the Government’s figures suggest there are actually an average of six per mile in England and Wales. Since there’s 190,000 miles of road in England, that means there should be just 1,330,000 potholes to fill…

Honda’s big electric bike is due in production form later this year – but where are the customers?

Electric bike adoption plans on hold for now

Back in 2022 the Conservative government started a public consultation into ending the sales of ‘non-zero emissions’ motorcycles with the provisional target of ending sales of petrol-powered bikes by 2035 and sub-125cc machines by 2030. That consultation, like many others launched under the previous government, is now in limbo and the current government is wrestling with the reality of the changeover to electric power on four wheels.

While Labour has reversed Conservative plans to push back the dates for banning purely petrol or diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, the essence of the plan for four-wheelers remains as it has for several years. In short, after 2030 it will only be possible to sell a new petrol or diesel car if it’s a hybrid that has the ability to run in purely electric mode, and after 2035 it will be illegal to sell new petrol or diesel cars at all. However, a new consultation issued by the Government shows that even though that 2030 date is now only four-and-a-bit years away it’s yet to decide the details of what will or won’t be allowed and it wants input from the public and experts to help hammer out the exact shape of those rules. With such a lack of clarity on the imminent transition to zero-emissions cars, even in a market where 20% of new cars sold in the country are purely electric, and hybrids or plug-in hybrids account for another 24% of the total, (the remainder is 50% petrol and 6% diesel), it’s impossible to see how a similar change can be made in the motorcycle market in the foreseeable future. Electric motorcycle registrations in 2024 in the UK sat at just 3750 vehicles, almost all of them (3523) with less than 15hp. Only 34 electric bikes with over 47hp (35kW) were sold. That means only 3.2% of bikes sold in the UK in 2024 were electric. If we eliminate sub-15hp learner-legal machines from the equation to focus on the ‘large’ bikes that the 2022 consultation suggested should be banned in 2035, only somewhere between 112 (electric bikes over 15hp) and 227 (the figure including electric bikes listed as ‘exempt’ or ‘unknown’ in terms of power) were sold last year, equivalent to between 0.16% and 0.32% of total sales in the over-125cc classes. The idea that those figures – which have actually been in decline since 2022 when the consultation was announced – could become 100% of sales in less than a decade is now unimaginable.

The Status of UK Motorcycling - Summer 2024

We’re barrelling into peak riding season and the prospect of long days and dry roads mean bikes are probably taking up more of your attention than at any other time of the year – whether it’s track days, touring or simply taking the long route back from work. And inevitably that means you’re probably more focussed than ever on the highs and lows of riding whether it’s the state of the roads, what you might be buying next, or the longer-term future of motorcycles as a whole.

So here’s our round-up of what’s happening in UK motorcycling right now and developments expected in the future following a general election that (at the time of writing) looks all but certain to return Labour to power for the first time since 2010.

New bike sales

Last year’s motorcycle sales took a dip as inflation and interest rates soared and the numbers from the first third of 2024 can tentatively be interpreted as stabilisation – with outright registrations by the end of April showing a 0.1% increase over the same period in the previous year. In actual numbers that’s just 42 extra new bikes sold, for a total of 37,912 according to official industry figures from the MCIA.

It's certainly not a ‘recovery’ after 2023’s sales dropped by 2.5% compared to 2022, but it indicates that the decline has been arrested.

During the early part of the year it looked like we might be seeing a substantial uptick in sales. January’s registrations were up by more than 5% on the previous year, February’s by over 6%. But that’s down partly to the fact that the early part of 2023 was particularly hard-hit by the financial chaos that followed Liz Truss’s ‘mini budget’ in September 2022.

March, however – usually a peak month for sales as the introduction of new models to the market coincides with introduction the new year’s registration plates – took a surprise dive, dropping enough to bring the overall sales for the year so far to be on a par with 2023. That may be because sales in March 2023 were unusually strong, particularly in the context of the overall drop in sales for the year and the fact it was the wettest March in 40 years. It might also reflect the fact that the most significant new bike of the year, BMW’s R1300GS, hit showrooms before the end of 2023, making buyers less inclined to wait for the new registration plates and keener to simply get their hands on a completely new version of the perennial best-seller.

This year’s March figures are more like those from 2022, which was a stronger year overall but didn’t have 2023’s high peaks and troughs, suggesting that – on the basis of the first third of the year alone – 2024 might be a return to something resembling normality.

Digging a bit deeper, the sheer power of BMW’s R-series GS models in shaping this country’s motorcycle landscape is illustrated in adventure bike sales that were up more than 11% year-on-year by the end of April. That comes after adventure bike segment growth that slowed from 19.6% in 2021 to 4.8% in 2022 and 1.9% in 2023. It’s probably not coincidental that 2021 saw the last set of updates to the R1250GS.

However, the outright sales success of the new R1300GS won’t be felt for another year, as the Adventure version of that bike has yet to be launched. The Adventure variant of the previous R1250GS often vied for the top sales spot, and despite being on the verge of replacement it regained that position in April 2024, outselling even the new R1300GS that month in the UK.

We already know there will be an R1300GS Adventure launched later this year, alongside semi-automatic versions of both the R1300GS and R1300GS Adventure – another factor that could cement the bikes’ positions at the top of the charts, since Honda’s experience with its semi-auto DCT box has been nothing but positive on the Africa Twin, accounting for around half of that bike’s sales.

The resurgence of adventure bikes means the class is now, once again, the most popular in the UK. It was beaten to that spot in 2023 by the naked bike category, but the latest numbers show that naked machines are currently down 11.1% year-on-year in the first third of 2024, giving adventure models the chance to sneak ahead again.

Other winners in 2024 so far include sports bikes, which are experiencing a resurgence after many years of decline. It’s a class that ended 2023 with a modest 3.9% increase in sales over 2022, but so far in 2024 it’s up by an impressive 16.7%. There are still more than two adventure bikes sold for ever every sports bike to find a buyer, but it’s a class that’s booming in comparison to the seemingly unstoppable decline it suffered for many years since the turn of the millennium. Indeed, so far this year sports bikes are the fastest-growing segment of the market – and that’s not something we’ve been able to say for a long time. 2024’s growth follows increases for the segment in 2022 and 2023, suggesting this is a sustained trend rather than a market blip.

The sports bikes driving that resurgence are a far cry from the eyeball-flattening litre superbikes that used to rule the category. This year’s month-by-month best-sellers in the category have been the Suzuki GSX-R125, the Suzuki GSX-8R, Kawasaki’s Ninja 1000SX and Honda’s CBR650R.

The next target for the sports bike class will be to overtake the ‘modern classics’ category, which is also growing but at a slower rate. By the end of April this year, 4104 modern classics had been sold, compared to 3437 sports bikes, making them the fourth and fifth most popular classes, behind adventure bikes, scooters and naked bikes. Again, the big sellers in the modern classics class aren’t the ones they might have been a few years ago – instead of large-capacity Bonnevilles and Thruxtons the best-selling Triumph in the class is the new Speed 400, which has been vying with Royal Enfield’s Meteor 350 for the top spot so far in 2024. Small, cheap, single-cylinder machines appear to be the order of the day.

In our last report on the state of UK motorcycling we noted that electric bikes – the machines that many expect to represent the future – were having a nightmare attracting customers, with a 37.8% drop in sales in 2023 compared to 2022. That’s been reversed to an extent in 2024 so far, with 10.4% growth for the electric bike market during the first third of the year. The January to April sales figures show 1188 electric bikes found owners in the UK during that time, but despite being better than 2023’s equivalent numbers, those figures are less than half the number of electric bikes (2489) sold in January-April 2022. A decline in government incentives is likely to be at least partly to blame, but the growth of the largely unregulated market for electrically-assisted bicycles is also likely to be stealing a substantial number of sales from the lower end of the electric motorcycle market.

Yamaha’s NMAX 125 was last year’s best-seller overall, while the R1250GS Adventure topped sales over 125cc

What are the most popular new bikes?

As usual there’s a lag between the headline sales figures released by the MCIA and the official government numbers on new registrations but the full details of every model registered by the DVLA during 2023 have now been released by the Department for Transport – showing a few key trends.

Yamaha’s NMAX 125 scooter continued to dominate overall sales for two-wheelers in 2023, with a final quarter that stretched its lead over the competition. With a grand total of 4013 sold in 2023, it’s more than 800 bikes clear of its nearest rival, Honda’s PCX125 scooter.

The full top-ten list of UK best-sellers for 2023 is:

Restricting our view to machines over 125cc, BMW’s R1250GS Adventure topped the charts for 2023 as a whole, with 1697 sales, and such is the GS’s domination that the base version of the R1250GS was the second-best seller on 1153 registrations. The margin would have been much closer but for the fact that the base R1250GS was replaced in the last quarter of 2023 by the all-new R1300GS, which managed nearly 360 sales of its own during that period.

Honda’s CB750 Hornet comes in next, with 1017 registrations during 2023, followed by Royal Enfield’s HNTR 350 on 946.

Royal Enfield and Triumph are joint winners when it comes to entries in the top ten, each with three models making the list, and remarkably there are just two Japanese machines in the ten best sellers – the Honda CB750 Hornet and Kawasaki’s Ninja 1000 SX.

The full top-10 of over-125cc bikes is:

Turning our attention to electric bikes, the market is still dominated by cheap, low-performance scooters and off-roaders, with the Sur-Ron Ultra Bee topping the charts by a substantial mark.

However, there’s a notable new entry at number 10, with the SEAT MÓ 125 – manufactured by Scutum but sold in SEAT car dealers and with SEAT branding – slotting into the charts. It suggests that electric bikes are genuinely making some headway when it comes to persuading car drivers to switch to two wheels, offering an unintimidating, easy-to-use route into motorcycling.

The full top-10 of electric bikes is:

Sur-Ron’s Ultra Bee is the UK’s best-selling electric bike by a large margin

Buying a new bike?

Bank of England interest rates might still be high and while inflation’s dropping it’s still not insubstantial – but there are hints that if you’re prepared to shop around you’ll find appealing offers even on some popular new bikes at the moment.

Last time we looked into it, most manufacturers were offering PCP deals with interest rates between around 8% and 10%, and while that’s still the case there are a growing number of deals on specific models that give the chance to substantially undercut those numbers.

Over at BMW, for instance, the R1250GS Adventure – 2023’s best-selling bike over 125cc and still rivalling the R1300GS for sales in 2024 so far – is being blown out with a cheap-looking 2.9% ARP PCP deal. That’s sure to be because the new R1300GS Adventure is set to be unveiled within the next few months, with an inevitable knock-on effect on prices for the older 1250 variant. For buyers who would rather get a low price than the latest-and-greatest model, it’s an opportunity – deals on the old 1250 are likely to be increasingly attractive prior to the R1300GS Adventure’s launch, and if there are any left in dealers after the new model appears they’re likely to get cheaper still, although playing that waiting game could be a gamble as the R1250GS Adventure is still selling like the proverbial hot cakes at the moment, making surplus stocks less likely.

Sticking with BMW, the company is also offering a 0% APR deal on the F900R until 1st July 2024 – potentially a clue that there’s an updated version coming for the 2025 model year on the heels of the lightweight new F900GS that was launched in the 2024 model range. And even the company’s S1000 four-cylinder models are subject to an offer until 1st July, with the S1000RR and S1000R coming in at 3.9% APR.

As last time we did a market update, Suzuki is offering 4.9% APR deals on several models, which is below the BoE base rate. You can get that deal on the V-Strom 800, GSX-8R, GSX-8S and the GSX-S1000GX as well as older offerings like the Hayabusa, GSX-S1000 and V-Strom 1050.

Similarly, Triumph has an array of 4.9% APR finance deals on the go at the moment, including the Street Triple 765 R and RS and the Tiger Sport 660, while the Tiger 1200 range is available at 6.9%. It also has ‘personalisation contributions’ of between £500 and £2000 on a broad array of bikes, and free panniers with the Tiger 850 Sport.

Yamaha’s normal finance deal, which was 9.9% APR last time we investigated, has dipped to 8.9% on several models, plus a £750 deposit contribution or accessories worth up to £1000, with the MT-07, MT-10, Tenere 700, Tracer 9, Tracer 7, R7 and R3 all included in that offer. It expires at the end of June.

Kawasaki is also offering a deal with a £650 deposit contribution towards the Z650, Z650RS, Ninja 650, Vulcan S and Versys 650, and £500 towards toe the Ninja 125 and Z125. Higher up the range, there’s a £900 voucher for merchandise, accessories or riding gear with the Z900RS and Z900, or a £1000 voucher with the Versys 1000 or Ninja 1000SX. Stretch your budget to the supercharged Z H2 or Ninja H2 SX and you get a £3000 voucher. During June, the company is taking another £400 off the Z900RS and Ninja 1000SX, on top of that voucher deal.

Over at Ducati, there’s a 6.9% APR finance offer on the Multistrada V4, DesertX and the Diavel V4, and the company has introduced an unusual ‘Accelerate’ deal on the Monster, Scrambler, Streetfighter V2 and Streetfighter V4. This lets you pay 50% of the bike’s price up front and then ride it for two years without any payments. At the end of that period, like a PCP deal, you get the chance to either pay the remaining 50% or to simply hand the bike back. If you’ve got the funds to buy outright it makes sense – you can weigh up the used value after the two-year period to decide whether it’s worth paying the balance or not – or it means customers who might have been in the market to purchase a used bike outright could afford a new one instead.

Ducati’s new ‘Accelerate’ deal lets you pay 50% up front and 50% two years later – or simply hand the bike back

What else is happening in motorcycling in 2024?

While the general election and the likely formation of a new government that will result means that plans for legislative changes are currently up in the air pending the whims of whoever ends up in Downing Street, a lot of decisions are expected in the coming months that could change aspects of riding for years to come.

Back in May the Telegraph reported that unnamed ‘industry sources’ believed that the Government’s much-delayed plan the sale of non-zero emissions motorcycles was soon to be announced, stating that the cut-off date was set to be 2040. That hasn’t happened yet, and with the election being called and parliamentary business suspended, it looks unlikely to be on the agenda in the immediate future. The original research into the idea took place back in 2022, with a consultation that ran from July until September that year. Initially, the government had hoped to end the sale of combustion engine bikes under 125cc by 2030 (or sooner) and larger ones by 2035, but both those dates now seem ridiculously ambitious given the lack of progress in the electric motorcycle market since 2022. Feedback on the 2022 consultation was supposed to be released within months, but two years on from its announcement the official line is still “We are continuing to analyse the feedback we have received.”

Back in the real world there’s been a distinct step back from electrification plans from some manufacturers, particularly when it comes to larger, longer-range bikes. While several major manufactures including Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki have pledged to launch more electric motorcycles during 2024, as will newcomers to the market like Can-Am, we’ve yet to see any sign of a credible large, high-performance electric bike under development that might be able to create a ‘Tesla’ moment in the industry and skew opinions towards EVs. Quite the opposite, in fact, as brands are increasingly developing low-emissions alternatives, with the Japanese ‘Big Four’ partnering up on a project to create hydrogen-fuelled combustion engines for future bikes, while European brands like Ducati and Triumph – while dabbling in electric prototypes and, for Ducati, race bikes – aren’t seriously expecting to have showroom models in the near future.

Self-driving cars like this Wayve prototype will be more widely allowed on UK roads by 2026

A law change that has been passed through parliament is the Automated Vehicles Act, which was rubber-stamped in May and will allow fully autonomous vehicles to drive themselves on British roads alongside us soft meat-bags. The argument in favour of the legislation is a somewhat spurious one – that human error contributes to 88% of road collisions. Since humans are currently the only things legally driving vehicles on the road, their mistakes will inevitably contribute to accidents. In theory, each autonomous vehicle that’s granted permission to operate on the roads will have to prove that can ‘achieve a level of safety equivalent to, or high than, that of a careful and competent human drivers’ with the result that ‘road safety in Great Britian will be better.’

 There are already trials of self-driving cars in London and Oxford, with companies Wayve and Oxa both testing autonomous vehicles, and the Government estimates that the self-driving industry could be worth up to £42 billion and create 38,000 jobs by 2035.

Whether the technology can live up to those intentions remains far from clear at this stage, as even the moderate driver-assist systems fitted to modern cars appear to struggle when it comes to spotting bikes. In April the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in American (IIHS) revealed that the existing crash avoidance systems fitted to several small SUVs in the States are under-par when it comes to detecting motorcycles under a new element of its test regime. Conducting tests at 31mph, 37mph and 43mph, the IIHS uses motorcycle dummies that are stationary in the centre and offset positions in a lane to see whether the cars’ collision-avoidance tech is able to stop them in time to prevent a crash. Testing on 10 small SUVs found that many of the vehicles struggled, with only one – the Subaru Forrester – achieving a ‘Good’ rating, but even it couldn’t stop in time at the highest test speed. Two other cars were rated as ‘Acceptable’ and a further three were considered ‘Marginal’. Four cars were rated ‘Poor’ and weren’t able to consistently mitigate against crashes with bikes.

Here in Europe, the Euro NCAP crash test regime also introduced a motorcycle-specific test for driver-assist systems in 2023, and the first sets of results are now available. The European tests are more extensive than the American ones, testing automatic emergency braking systems to see how they respond not only when approaching a stationary bike in the same lane but also whether they can react to a moving bike that brakes in front of them and whether they can prevent a driver front turning across the path of a motorcycle that’s coming in the other direction. The European tests have an additional set of tests for the lane-assist systems on modern cars, seeing if they can prevent cars changing lanes into the path of an oncoming bike or into an overtaking motorcycle.

Each ability is rated as one of five levels – good, adequate, marginal, weak and poor. The cars tested so far have generally performed well in the majority of the tests, but only account for a relatively small proportion of the very latest models on the market. Interestingly, a lot of the cars from little-known Chinese brands appear to perform particularly well – perhaps as a result of being developed on roads with a higher population of bikes.

Here are the results for the latest generation of motorcycle-avoidance tests that EuroNCAP has carried out so far on 2024 models:

New US and European collision avoidance tests for cars specifically include motorcycle dummies – with mixed results

Threat or opportunity for historic bikes?

Call us cynics but when the Government launches research with an eye to altering legislation around bikes the instinctive reaction is to be concerned that something is about to get more difficult than it used to be.

The latest one is an ‘open call for evidence’ on the subject of “Registering historic, classic, rebuilt vehicles and vehicles converted to electric.”

Closing on 4th July – the same date as the General Election – the government is, in its own words, “seeking evidence to help identify areas of potential change to how historic, classic, rebuilt and electrically converted vehicles are registered with DVLA.”

Anyone who’s had the dubious pleasure of trying to import a vintage bike, register a modified bike, or to reclaim the identity of a newly restored one that’s been off the road for decades will know that it can be something of a lottery. You might get lucky, be able to convince the DVLA of the bike’s heritage and originality and get an age-related plate and historic status – i.e. MOT and VED exemption for vehicles over 40 years old – or you might be lumbered with a ‘Q’ registration plate and the stigma of a bike that may or may not be what it appears.

The current rules, established back in the 80s, say that to retain its original plate, a modified or restored bike needs to have its original unaltered chassis and two other major components, for instance the engine and front or rear suspension. But of course it’s more complicated than that in real life. A brand-new frame, built to original specs, might qualify as ‘original and unaltered’ while a vintage one that’s been modified, even back when it was new, might not.

Quite what changes the government might have in mind aren’t clear from the call for evidence, but there’s clearly a growing trend for classic cars, and even bikes, to be converted to electric powertrains, and pressure for those vehicles to be able to retain their classic status, even if adding an electric motor and batteries requires modifications to the chassis that would, under the current rules, not be allowed.

What will the outcome be? It’s too early to know, but the call for evidence does mention that other countries often have a younger age limit for ‘historic’ vehicles – around 30 rather than 40 years of age – and implement specific safety checks and registration schemes. In some cases, there are also limitations on the use of historic vehicles, for instance restricting where and when they can be used.

With the right input, the Call for Evidence could result in improvements for classic bike owners – making it easier to register them and allowing more modifications so they’re usable as daily transport without losing their historic status, or lowering the bar in terms of age before a bike is considered ‘historic’. It’s worth bearing in mind that when the government first eliminated VED on older vehicles the cut-off point was 25 years old. That was frozen in 1997, though, and the rolling age VED exemption only restarted in 2014, applying to vehicles over 40 years old. If the original 25-year cut-off had remained, we’d be enjoying bikes like 1st-genertation R1s and Hayabusas VED-free by now…

To take part and give your own views, you can go to the call for evidence before the 4th July by clicking here.

The Status of UK Motorcycling - Spring 2024

As the days start to get longer and endless torrents of rain wash the remains of the winter salt from the roads we’re fast heading into the new biking season – with riding, racing and new bike purchases starting to come to the fronts of our minds. But what is the state of play for motorcycling in the UK right now? We’ve dug into the data to find out the key trends.

New bike sales decline

The final numbers for 2023 showed that when it comes to buying new bikes there was a decline compared to the previous year. That’s not a huge surprise. After all, barely a day has gone by since Liz Truss’s catastrophic ‘mini budget’ in September 2022 without headlines about high interest rates and rising bills, all in the face of a cost-of-living crisis that’s been ongoing since 2021. The chances are that you don’t feel better off now than you did a couple of years ago.

Whenever budgets start to get squeezed non-essential purchases get postponed and for a large proportion of British riders, erring on the ‘leisure’ side of motorcycling, that means a brand-new bike can wait. The totals for last year showed that the overall bike market in this country was down by a modest 2.5%, dropping from 116,534 sales in 2022 to 113,589 in 2023. But those numbers warrant some further dissection as there have been much more substantial shifts when it comes to particular classes and categories.

The biggest losers of the year were scooters and the retro-style machines that the MCIA defines as ‘Modern Classic’ bikes. Sales of the former dropped by 2322 to 24,577, amounting to an 8.6% decline. Various factors are likely to be behind that decrease, notably the financial squeeze that many buyers are feeling but also the encroachment of the fast-growing e-bicycle market. Those same e-bikes are also behind the almost complete annihilation of the 50cc moped market over the last few years – and in 2023 it dropped another 22.8% to just 5,553 new registrations. After all, why buy a bike that needs insurance and tax if you can get away with an electric-assisted pedal bike that does nearly the same job without any of those overheads?

Although there was a double-digit decline in the touring bike market, down 12.3%, it was already at a low level so the actual numbers only slipped from 2942 registrations in 2022 to 2580 in 2023. The unstoppable rise of the adventure bike, many of which are used purely as tourers, is the reason for that. But the slowdown in the ‘Modern Classic’ arena, with sales dropping by a substantial 1179 from 12,117 to 10,938, could be a sign that tastes are moving away from 1960s-inspired machines after several years of sustained growth in that segment.

Turning to the climbers in the charts, adventure bikes are still rising and 2023 saw further increases so they now account for nearly 19% of all new registrations. But the rate of growth is dropping – in 2021 the adventure bike market grew by 19.6%, in 2022 it grew 4.8%, and in 2023 the increase was 1.9%. Are we reaching saturation point? Possibly, as other segments saw bigger increases both in percentage terms and actual sales. Naked bikes, for instance, grew 5.5%, extending their lead over adventure models and, with a 22% market share, remaining the most popular category overall. So called ‘Competition’ bikes – meaning road-legal enduro, trials and trail models saw a 7.1% rise and, while still a small segment compared to adventure machines, that figure amounted to a growth of 409 sales (up from 5780 to 6189), while adventure bike sales rose by only 401 registrations.

Even sports bikes, in decline for many years since their days as the dominant lifeform in UK motorcycling, are having a resurgence, with 2023 marking the second consecutive year of growth, up 3.9%, following a 7% increase in 2022.

Superbike sales aren’t all bad news – BMW’s S1000RR has done a roaring trade

Which are the most popular new bikes?

The official DfT statistics for vehicle licensing lag a bit behind the MCIA’s sales figures but we can look to the numbers for the first three quarters of 2023 to get a clear picture of which models are hits and which are misses in the current climate.

It’s no surprise to see BMW’s R1250GS Adventure and R1250GS near the top, and when combined the total registrations come within a whisker of matching the best-selling model on the Government’s list, the Yamaha Nmax 125 scooter.

But below the BMW GS, the best-sellers list shows a remarkably mixed-up combination of makes, models and styles. If we only look at bikes over 125cc, during the first three quarters of last year, the next best-seller was Honda’s CB750 Hornet – showing that its combination of an attractive RRP and high levels of performance and equipment compared to rivals is just as successful as it appears on paper. But it’s followed by Royal Enfield’s HNTR 350, then Triumph’s Street Triple RS and Kawasaki’s Ninja 1000 SX. Each a very different bike, illustrating the diversity of the market at the moment.

Even if ‘Modern Classic’ bikes are on the decline, it doesn’t seem to be harming Royal Enfield. If we look only at bikes over 125cc, RE has three models in the top ten best-sellers, with the Meteor 650 and Classic 350 joining the HNTR 350, and the Interceptor 650 and Meteor 350 aren’t far away either. The BSA Gold Star, too, has shown itself to be a surprise hit, with 600 registered in the first three quarters of the year. That’s enough to pip some strong-selling machines including the Triumph Tiger 660 Sport (595 registrations), Honda CB500X (562) and even Yamaha’s MT-07 (529 sales during the first three quarters).

When it comes to that resurgent sports bike market, there’s a distinct split between the high-end machines and the more affordable offerings. At the 200hp-plus end of the market, BMW is again a winner, with the S1000RR achieving 551 sales in the first three quarters of 2023 and another 70 customers snapping up the exotic M1000RR. That means BMW’s superbike is its second best-seller after the R1250GS and gives lie to the old adage of ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ as the S1000RR/M1000RR’s WSBK record isn’t littered with victories.

The bike that dominated superbike racing in 2023 was Ducati’s Panigale V4, and its sales illustrate that there’s still a large segment of customers for whom the term ‘cost-of-living crisis’ is something that only applies to other people. In total, Ducati registered 230 Panigale V4s in the first three quarters of 2023, but remarkably nearly half of them – 97 – were the £38,995 Panigale V4 R. That homologation special outsold the V4 S (52), the V4 SP2 (39) and left the base Panigale V4 to bring up the rear on 38 registrations during that period. However, Panigale sales were dwarfed by those of the Multistrada V4, which accounted for 562 registrations (all variants) over the same nine months. So much for Ducati being a V-twin sports bike company (its best-selling twin was the Desert X on 199 registrations, while 160 people bought the Panigale V2, which sticks to the classic Ducati recipe).

Other litre superbikes lag behind those rivals in terms of sales, but Yamaha’s R1 appears to have come out on top from the Japanese crop in terms of registrations in what might be its final full year on the market here as the company isn’t planning to update it for the latest ‘Euro5+’ emissions rules.

However, it’s at the other end of the sports bike market that there’s substantial activity at the moment. We’ve just seen Suzuki launch the GSX-8R and Triumph introduce the Daytona 660, and there are rumblings that Honda has a CBR750 based on the CB750 Hornet waiting in the wings. Those launches indicate an appetite from customers for a breed of daily-useable sports all-rounders in the mould of the old Honda CBR600F of the 80s and 90s, and the sales figures back up that impression. Yamaha’s R7, for instance, despite not being in the first flush of youth, racked up 460 new registrations in the first nine months of 2023, with Honda’s age-old CBR650R coming in at 329 sales. Even Aprilia’s RS660 – a more expensive proposition than the Japanese machines – has been doing strong business, racking up 239 registrations in the same time period to easily become Aprilia’s best-selling motorcycle model in the UK.

It’s the brightest outlook for the sports bike market in years, suggesting a new generation of riders are discovering the joys of race-replicas and increasing the odds that more models will be launched into the same segment soon.

Top 10 best sellers (to the end of Q3, 2023)

Top 10 best sellers over 125cc (to the end of Q3, 2023)

BSA Gold Star is a surprise top-10 best seller – bucking the trend for decreasing sales of retro bikes

Have electric bikes tripped a breaker?

There’s a huge push towards electric motorcycles at the moment, whether in the form of R&D investment or Government policy, but the sales figures show that customers have yet to be convinced in any substantial numbers.

The total UK market for electric bikes nosedived by 37.8% in 2023, dropping from 6526 new registrations in 2022 to just 4062 last year.  Of those, the vast majority were at the low end of the market, with 1762 falling into the sub 5hp moped category and 1956 in the 5hp-15hp 125cc-equivalent segment. Just 58 electric bikes over 47hp (35kW) were sold in 2023, exactly half the number of that category sold in 2022.

It all points to a lack of progress in a field that really should be seeing a breakneck pace of development and reconfirms that despite a lot of bold talk there’s still virtually nothing in the higher end EV motorcycle market from any of the established brands.

When it comes to specific model sales, again we need to look at the DfT’s statistics for the first nine months of 2023. They show that the best-selling electric bike, by some margin, was Sur-Ron’s Ultra Bee (238 registered), followed by the Light Bee from the same brand (211 sold). VMoto’s CPA and Maeving’s RM1 tie for third on 186 registrations each.

You have to trawl down the list some way before any of the more established brands make an appearance. Piaggio is the first legacy brand to appear, with the Piaggio One scooter (102 registrations in the first three quarters of 2023 when you include two versions of the bike), with BMW’s CE 04 in 11th place on 70 registrations. The top selling Japanese model is the Yamaha Neo’s (12th place, 54 registered by the end of Q3 2023).

The Government is imminently due to release its response to the 2022 consultation into ending sales of non-zero emissions motorcycles in the UK, which proposed an outright end on new combustion engine bike sales by 2035 and ending the sales of sub-125cc machines by 2030. The parlous state of the electric motorcycle market in the UK suggests those plans are in no position to go ahead without some significant changes.

Despite the downward trajectory in 2023 and the slow take-up form big manufacturers, in the longer term electric bikes are still likely to become increasingly important, particularly when the sketchy charging network in the UK is improved.

Top 10 best-selling electric bikes (to the end of Q3, 2023)

Sur-Ron Ultra Bee tops a disappointing electric bike sales chart

Latest in the used bike market

While it’s relatively easy to analyse the market for new bikes in the UK, the world of second-hand sales is a murkier one without the same clear paper-trail to monitor it.

However, there are statistics that give some clues to what’s happening. The most up-to-date Government statistics relate to the full year of 2022, and while it’s impossible to break down precisely the makes, models and styles of bikes that are changing hands it’s clear that there’s a roaring trade in used bikes, far exceeding the sales of new machines.

In 2022, there were a total of 504,602 used bike sales, based on the number of changes of keeper recorded on registration documents. Of those, 325,061 bikes change hands once during the year, 62,421 went through two sets of owners, 12,450 were sold three times and 2990 had four different keepers during the 12-month period. Somehow, 1011 bikes managed to have more than four keepers – presumably those are absolute lemons that owners can’t wait to get shot of. Another 2,444,672 registered bikes didn’t change hands during the year.

While there’s no breakdown of the makes and models that constitute all those sales, they’ll logically be in proportion to the overall numbers of specific models the road at the moment. Those are figures we can get hold of, and as with the Government’s new registration numbers the most recent figures relate to the number of bikes that were taxed in third quarter of 2023 – essentially the peak of last year’s riding season.

Those show that the single most common bike on Britian’s roads is Yamaha’s NMax 125 scooter, accounting for 13,516 taxed, road-legal machines at that snapshot in time. Stepping up to larger bikes, the BMW GS unsurprisingly dominates, with the R1200GS just pipping the R1250GS Adventure, followed by the standard R1250GS. Yamaha’s MT-07 is the next most popular bike over 125cc, followed by Triumph’s Street Triple RS and, surprisingly, the Yamaha FSZ600 and XJR1300, showing that those machines are managing to remain on the road many years after they were discontinued.

Another set of figures shows the bikes with a valid SORN (statutory off-road notice), suggesting they’re slumbering and waiting for their owners to revive them. The SORN’d bikes list is dominated by sports bikes of yore, with Yamaha’s R1 and R6 and Honda’s VFR800, CBR900RR and Blackbird all featuring in the top 20. Surprisingly, there are no BMWs, Suzukis, Triumphs or Kawasakis in the SORN top 20 at all. Perhaps their riders prefer to keep them taxed and road-legal.

Top 10 most common bikes (taxed at the end of Q3 2023)

Top 10 most commonly SORNed bikes (at the end of Q3 2023)

Despite its near £40k price, the Ducati Panigale V4 R has sold strongly

Buying a motorcycle in 2024

You probably don’t need us to tell you that the heady days of 0% finance and tiny PCP payments are a faint memory now – with the Bank of England base rate at its highest since before the 2008 financial crisis (5.25% at the time of writing) and little chance that it will be dipping back to the sub-1% levels that we’ve got used to over the last decade or so.

A quick scan of the offers from major manufacturers at the moment shows their own finance schemes are largely hovering around the 9.9% mark at the time of writing, but as ever the really important number is the monthly payment, and that can vary wildly from one model to another because the bike’s depreciation affects its guaranteed future value (GFV), the final ‘balloon’ payment of a PCP deal. If, like many riders, you plan to chop in for another new bike rather than pay that final lump sum, choosing a machine that depreciates less – even if the interest rate or RRP is higher than another model – can result in a lower monthly outlay.

When it comes to particular deals at the moment, Honda has 9.9% APR representative PCP and various offers of free services, roadside assistance, tracker subscriptions, accessories contributions and deposit contributions on a selection of models across its range, and it’s a similar story at Yamaha. Suzuki and Kawasaki are both offering a lower rate of 4.9% on certain models (that’s below the BoE base rate) but also adopt the 9.9% level on others, and again have a wide array of money-off on accessories or deposit contributions.

The big European brands are in the same boat, with Ducati also offering 9.9% APR representative PCP on most of its models, along with bike-specific deals for money off accessories, while BMW has an 8.9% APR offer until April on a wide range of its bikes, along with deposit contributions on many of them, ranging as high as £1800. Triumph has ‘personalisation contributions’ – which can be used as deposits or spent on accessories or kit – on several of its remaining 2023 models, ranging as high as £2750 on the 2023-spec Tiger 1200.

However, don’t bank purely on the offers that manufacturers have on the table. Hunt for the specific bike you’re after and try a range of different dealers to see what each of them can come up with. There’s a good chance you’ll save hundreds, even thousands, compared to the RRPs on many bikes.

Motorcycling injuries haven’t been falling as fast under the current licence regime as they did before it was introduced. Brexit means there’s a chance to introduce a UK-specific system that works better.

What is in store for motorcycling in 2024?

With a General Election all but certain before the end of 2024 and polls pointing towards a change in government when it happens, time is running out for legislation changes that will impact motorcycling and a lot of big decisions are likely to be pushed back until after the vote.

However, there are several motorcycle-related things on the agenda at the moment that could have an impact on motorcycling as we know it.

The two biggest long-term changes that we can expect some clarification on relate to the future of motorcycle licences in this country, and the future of the internal combustion engine.

The Government’s consultation ‘L-category vehicles: ending sales of new non-zero emission models’ (‘L-category’ means motorcycles), closed in September 2022. In it, the Government proposed ending the sale of non-zero emissions bikes – essentially anything using a combustion engine – by 2035, with lower-performance bikes in the sub-125cc classes to be axed even sooner, in 2030. The consultation’s ‘what happens next’ section said that responses would be published within three months of the consultation closing, but that hasn’t happened and the official line is that the feedback is still being analysed.

The motorcycle industry has since met with Government representatives and is understood to be pushing for a more technology-agnostic approach, leaving doors open for ideas like hydrogen combustion engines and synthetic, carbon-neutral fuels for conventional petrol engines as well as pure electric bikes in the future.

A response from the Government is expected at some stage this year, but it seems increasingly unlikely that the cut-off dates mentioned in the original consultation (nearly two years ago now) can survive as manufacturers need to be given a reasonable lead-in time for such wholesale change in their technologies.

Where we might see beneficial legislative changes around motorcycling, and in a shorter-term future, is around the routes to motorcycle licences. The current, complicated and expensive system has been a bone of contention ever since it was introduced as part of the 3rd European Driving Licence Directive (3DLD) in 2013. It introduced hurdles and raised age limits for direct access, but far from resulting in a reduction in motorcycling deaths, the same time saw a consistent downward trend in fatalities come to an end. Between 2004 and 2012, the number of riders killed on the roads in this country annually dropped from 585 to 328, with a similar trend in injuries. But from 2013 to 2022 (the latest figures available), that decline has stopped. In 2013 there were 331 deaths, and in 2022 there were 350, with similar numbers in most years between. It’s a similar story for casualty rates per mile, which dropped from 186 riders killed per billion miles ridden in 2004 to 125 per billion miles in 2013 but have remained at that level ever since – the number for 2022 wad 123 per billion miles. One reason might be that riders are disincentivised from getting training and progressing up to the next licence stage, with many – particularly in today’s gig economy where scooters are a vital delivery tool – using CBT to get L-plates and then staying at that level rather than developing their skills to gain a full licence.

Brexit means the UK isn’t tied to the European Driving Licence Directive anymore. We’re free to implement our own system of training and testing, as well as different age limits if we want, and the motorcycle industry has been deep in discussion with the Government on how to do just that. In the EU the 4th European Driving Licence Directive is currently being finalised and isn’t expected to make it any easier to get on a bike, but the UK is in a position to adopt a more logical position that encourages riders to get more skills rather than simply adding more hoops to jump through.

We can look forward to more detailed proposals being laid out in the near future, but it will take legislation – and hence time – for real change to happen.

One Government consultation that has concluded this year relates to the MOT, which the DfT was considering changing to extend the gap before the first test from three years to four or even five. We dug into the details of that, and why it would be a bad idea, in 2023. With the conclusion of the consultation, the Government has decided not to change the MOT intervals, sticking with the age-old routine of three years before the first one, followed by annual tests, while vaguely suggesting that it will ‘explore’ modernising the MOT to better suit electric vehicles in the future.

The election hangs over all of this, of course. We’ve yet to hear what each party has planned for motorcycling, but be sure that once campaigning is underway, we’ll be pushing to get answers from each of them as to how they want to see it develop in the future.

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