Motorcycle sales weakened in March: Just a blip or start of a trend?

On one hand, BMW and Ducati reported record sales in 2022 and Ducati followed that up with another record for the first quarter of 2023. Harley-Davidson reported a 20 percent jump in revenues in the first quarter of 2023 over the previous year.

On the other hand, experts have been expecting a recession for a long time now and we have seen news reports of consumers dialing back on discretionary purchases as stubborn inflation has kept the cost of necessities, such as groceries, high. For most motorcyclists in the United States, a motorcycle and everything associated with it is very much a discretionary purchase. And while dealer inventories of new motorcycles have recovered, reducing pressure on used motorcycle prices somewhat, used motorcycle prices are still above historical trends. Given all that, it's very easy for the U.S. motorcyclist to say, "I'll put off replacing my bike until next year and see if prices come down."

I think we're seeing evidence of that hesitancy — and perhaps the arrival of the long-anticipated, never-materializing recession — in the latest quarterly report from the Motorcycle Industry Council.

The MIC reported that U.S. sales of new motorcycles and scooters in the first quarter of 2023 were down 2.1% from 2022. No big deal, right? But broken down by month, that was the result of increases of about 6% in January and February, followed by a 10.3% decrease in March, just when the selling season usually starts picking up. That matches other data and anecdotal evidence that consumers are starting to be more cautious and shift their spending to other categories as the pressures of inflation wear on. Major retailers Walmart and Target reported quarterly earnings last week and also noted that consumers cut back on spending in March, especially larger discretionary purchases, more than in the first two months of the quarter. So the trend appears to be much broader than the motorcycle industry.

Extremes: Adventure bikes and scooters

Ever since the pandemic, the strongest segments in the U.S. motorcycle market have been off-road motorcycles and dual-sports. When we've written about those trends, many readers have been confused because they haven't seen many new or attractive dual-sport models. The explanation is that the MIC lumped all street-legal, off-road-capable motorcycles into the dual-sport category, so it included the popular and fast-growing adventure-touring segment. Now, the MIC is refining its categories to reflect the importance of the adventure bikes. That category will be subdivided into "Dual Sport" and "Dual Adventure" segments.

That may not entirely end the confusion, however. When dividing up the broad category of street-legal, off-road-capable motorcycles, most people think of dual-sports as lighter, dirt-focused bikes and adventure bikes as bigger, more touring-capable machines. The new definitions the MIC is using generally follow those guidelines. Just to give a few examples, the BMW R 1250 GS, Honda Africa Twin, and Aprilia Tuareg 660 fall into the adventure category, while the Honda CRF450L, Suzuki DR-Z400S, and Kawasaki KLX300 fall into the dual-sport category, as you'd expect.

But not all the examples are so clear-cut. The BMW G 310 GS, though small, is less off-road-focused with its 19-inch front wheel and cast aluminum instead of spoked wheels, so it falls in the adventure category. Fair enough. But meanwhile, the Triumph Scrambler 1200 XE, despite its large-displacement engine and 500-pound weight, is listed in the dual-sport category. Considering that an entire Highside/Lowside podcast was devoted to the task of defining a dual-sport motorcycle, there may be no such thing as the final word on this topic. My perspective is that It's helpful that the MIC split up the dual-sport category to recognize the huge importance of adventure-touring motorcycles today, but the stats are still best used to watch for general trends, not tiny nuances in the market.

One other trend I've been expecting to see is a decline in scooter sales as urban residents — the people most likely to buy scooters — increasingly turn to electric bicycles that don't need a parking spot, a license plate, insurance, or the maintenance associated with an internal-combustion engine. The MIC's Q1 report showed a 24.7% drop in scooter sales compared to the first quarter of 2022, and once again most of that weakness showed up in March.

When Common Tread compared a 50 cc scooter and a Super73 electric bicycle side by side for urban transportation, our two testers concluded that most people would be better off with the electric bicycle. While bigger scooters still have their place, I expect 50 cc scooters to get squeezed out of the market as buyers opt instead for an electric bicycle they can put in the bicycle storage room of their apartment building or bring into the apartment itself, instead of leaving a gas-powered scooter vulnerably parked on the street or pay for a parking spot. Unless you just love the style of a classic scooter, it's getting harder to argue that a 50 cc scooter is a better short-range urban transportation option than the growing number of styles of electric bicycles available.