Put the virus aside for a moment and focus on a major national crisis - the slow loss of America's riding tradition. What is going on here? These numbers are from 2019, so they are NOT artificially suppressed by the Wuhan flu:
>United States: Motorcycles & ATV market down for the fourth year in a row
>The United States motorcycles market in 2019 reported the fourth decline in a row hitting the lowest level in decades, with 640.608 sales (-3.6%) in the combined moto & ATVs segments. While Harley-Davidson and the top 7 brands have lost, KTM kept growing. BMW, Triumph and Ducati have lost, moderately.
>Recent Market figures
>In, 2018 total US Market figures were 664,769, down 2.3% from the previous year. The motorcycles/scooter segment sales were 457.373 (-2.6%) while the ATV segment sales were 207.396 (-1.6%).
>In 2019, the trend was unchanged and the steady decline continued. Indeed, year-end total industry volume was 640.608 (-3.6%) with motorcycles at 443.388 units (-3.1%) and ATV for the first time in this decade below the 200k, at 197,220 units, down 4.9%. The motorcycles sector (which includes motorbikes and scooters) is at the lowest level in decades, confirming the lost of attractiveness of the sector for young Americans.
>In these years, Harley Davidson has declined from 160,400 sales reported in the 2012 to 125,955 in the 2019 (-5.2%), losing 22.1% of volume between 2016 and 2019.
>In 2019, the top seven brands have lost volumes, not only the leader. So Honda was down 1.5%, Yamaha 3.5%, Polaris 5.9%, Kawasaki 6.6%, Suzuki 4.9%, Can-Am 1.2%.
motorcyclesdata.com