What's the Two-Wheel World Coming To Anyway?
WHAT'S THE TWO-WHEEL WORLD COMING TO ANYWAY?
ROUNDUP
We traveled to the world’s biggest bike show to find out
JOHN BURNS
AFTER ALL THE EICMA HOOPLA, it's time to write about "where the motorcycle industry is going.” Eh? Well, it’s going the same place it’s always gone: all over. If you’ve got the bucks, there are of course more exciting new technologically advanced motorcycles than ever. The star of EICMA was the Ducati 1199 Panigale Superbike that graced our cover last month. The Panigale is the cleanest, purest, most original and exciting Ducati since the 916, and it comes on the heels of the Diavel that was big news this time last year (and the Ducati Multistrada before it). Ducati is the poster child for the idea that if you build a better motorcycle (or a more interesting one, anyway), the world will still beat a path to your dealership no matter how bad “the economy” might be. In an otherwise flat year for motorcycle sales, Ducati reported its sales were up 63 percent for the first half of 2011 compared to 2010.
Triumph, too, is riding a wave, cranking out strong new models and ringing up record sales in one of the worst motorcycle markets in decades: Street Triples, Speed Triples, 675s, Tigers in 800 and now 1200 sizes, Bonnevilles, Sprints. Then there’s BMW, probably the strongest motorcycle manufacturer in the world right now. Not only did it invent modern “adventure touring” (I saw way more GSs running around Milan than Ducatis), it also torpedoed the Big Four Japanese with an incredibly good S1000RR, then turned around one year later and reinvented the touring bike with its pair of six-cylinder K 1600s.
With little territory left to annex for 2012, BMW did an interesting thing for a company that seems to have a better grasp on the current motorcycle market than any other player: It introduced a pair of “maxi-scooters.” If you like the Suzuki Burgman as much as we do, you’ll love the C 650 GT and C 600 Sport. They’re automatic-transmission scooters, but unlike any that have come before. With 60 horses from their 647cc Twins, these are, claims BMW, the most powerful, most efficient engines in the class. And they’re built to appeal to people who appreciate what BMW means, with wind-tunnel-tested aerodynamics, heated seats and grips, and production quality not seen before on a scooter. You’d think the marketing people would come up with a new name. Grosscooter? Mooter? Scooterrad? Okay, maybe not. Anyway, BMW says these machines respond to a world that will be increasingly congested (over 50 percent of us now live in cities), increasingly regulated and in which fuel will be increasingly expensive.
Honda, still the 800-pound gorilla of the Big Four, stated it was moving in a similar “worldwide” direction when it introduced the world-market CBR250R last year. With it, all those years of coddling to the tastes of us first-worlders with constantly evolving CBR1000RR and CBRóOORRs seem to have ceased for the time being (not that it kept us from getting the nicheless VFR1200F). Now, says Honda, we’re back to cranking out in voluminous numbers motorcycles we can sell in every corner of the world.
The first thing Honda rolled out in the laser light display in Milan was a 150cc scooter called the Integra. Similar to BMW’s maxis, Honda’s new NC700S and NC700X are clever motorcycle/ scooter hybrids with storage where their gas tanks are supposed to be (placing them already a giant step ahead of the DN-01). Crosstourer and Crossrunner use 1200 and 800cc V-Fours that were already on the shelf (both of them fantastic powerplants), in bikes that sort of want to be adventure-tourers but aren’t sure. Maybe Honda is just being more honest with its not-so-macho styling, since most adventure bikes will never deal with anything more rugged than a gravel driveway.
What BMW and Honda scooters share is a design both companies hope will appeal to motorcyclists and scooterists in Europe and elsewhere: fewer models in the lineup but with more of them sharing common drivetrains obviously means lower costs.
As for America, the BMWs are already up on the company’s U.S. website and will be here in the fall. American Honda—still trying to find the DN01 ’s storage compartment—hasn’t decided or isn’t saying if it will import the NCs.
For big manufacturers, markets like Brazil, Russia and India have begun to look like juicier targets as wealth flows from the first world into them. Hero MotoCorp of India (until August 9,2011, it was Hero Honda) is the biggest motorcycle producer in the world. In 2011, says Hero, it will have moved more than 5 million motorcycles (yes, 5,000,000), most of them in India, which just surpassed population One Billion. Cars aren’t the competition in India, bicycles are, and it’s a safe
bet nearly every Indian would prefer not to pedal. Hero’s sportiest motorcycle is the CBZ Xtreme, with 150cc four-stroke power, dual piggyback shocks and a 72,483 rupee price tag—about $1421 U.S. Why sweat a better CBR1000RR, Honda must ask itself, when we can just crank up the CRF230F line?
While dual-sport bikes are hot (up 14.3 percent in the U.S. as of September, 2011, says the Motorcycle Industry Council), sales of real enduro bikes continue to sag—depending on whose enduros we’re talking about, at least. KTM, which has found a way to put license plates on many of its models, is seeing strong sales (it claims 50 percent of the European market), while its off-road-only Japanese competitors languish (off-road-only sales are down 15.3 percent in the U.S.). One of the hardest bikes to get near at EICMA, in fact, was the new KTM Freeride 350, a lighter, more user-friendly street-legal enduro designed to be less intimidating to off-road novices—very much in the mold of a modern Honda 350 Scrambler from the ’60s. Even the Freeride electric looked like a lot of fun on KTM’s excellent promotional video.
“Then there’s BMW, probably the strongest motorcycle manufacturer in the world right now. Not only did it invent modern adventure touring,’ it also torpedoed the Big Four Japanese with an incredibly good S1000RR, then turned around one year later and reinvented the touring bike with Its pair of six-cylinder K1600s.”
Okay, so that’s where all the new-bike money is going. There’s no more money; sales are flat over the last few years and way down compared to pre-financial meltdown; but what money there is is being “conquered” by the Europeans and Triumph. What’s that they say about paybacks?
“There’s no more money; sales are flat over the last few years and way down compared to pre-financial meltdown; but what money there is is being ‘conquered’ by the Europeans and Triumph. What’s that they say about paybacks?”
But it’s an ill wind that blows no good, and just because people aren’t springing for new bikes doesn’t mean they’re not riding motorcycles. Au contraire, say our friends at the Motorcycle Industry Council, who report that the number of motorcyclists in the United States is decidedly up. For starters, the MIC says motorcycle mileage has gone way up over the last decade. Among the MIC’s chief weapons for tracking such things is tire sales, which are 10.1-percent higher through Q3 2011. People are riding their old bikes and buying used ones. The MIC doesn’t track used bikes, but anecdotally, you can see it on the street. Honda Twins from the ’60s, once classified “disposable,” are suddenly cool and collectible, and on the little screen, new shows like Café Racer are way popular.
Furthermore, the 2009 MIC Owner Survey, the latest census of motorcycling, found that the median age of motorcycle riders in America has dropped for the first time in many years. Boomers once outnumbered Gen X and Y riders by a ratio of four to one; that gap has closed to 1.25:1, says the MIC. In 2003, Gen Y riders made up just 13 percent of the motorcyclist population. In 2009, that number had risen to 29 percent. Newer generations of riders are replacing older ones, and that younger cohort is increasingly female (up from 6 percent in 2003 to 13.3 percent in 2009) and ethnically diverse. Add it all up, and the MIC’s favorite measuring stick (and maybe ours, too, now that we’ve heard it), “Household Penetration,” is up from 5.4 percent in 2003 to 6.8 percent just six years later. That means at least one motorcycle or scooter has worked its lovable snout into almost 7 of 100 American garages. Or living rooms, in my case.
So what’s the two-wheeled world coming to? Maybe just its senses.
