February UK bike registrations down again

Thursday, 11 March 2010

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February UK bike registrations down again

Despite fractionally better weather, UK powered two-wheeler registrations took another battering in the second month of 2010 with a 23.4 per cent overall decline year-on-year to 3145 units.

According to Motor Cycle Industry Association data, combined motorcycle and over-50cc scooter registrations fell by 23.5 per cent to 2447 units. Scooters alone were down by 29.1 per cent to 613 units. The sub-50cc moped sector shrank by 23.1 per cent to 698 units.

Of the motorcycle categories, best performer by a huge margin was the Sport/Tour slot thanks to the dealer launch of the new Honda VFR1200, putting on 59 per cent to a total of 299 units. Some 97 of these were VFR1200 products, an element of which were undoubtedly demonstrators.

However, every other specific category was negative with Supersport suffering the worst reversal - down by 45.5 per cent to 332 units. Naked bikes also took a big hit, falling by 35.5 per cent to 383 units. Adventure Sport fared better with only a 20.8 per cent drop to 236 units but a suspiciously rounded number of 40 BMW R1200GS models were among these, suggesting a dealer demonstrator or fleet use surge.

For this year to date, the PTW market has fallen by 34.3 per cent to 6712 units against the same period of 2009 - which was down by 15.3 per cent on the previous year. To get the full-horror perspective, in January and February of 2008 there were 12,070 new PTW registrations. So trade has almost halved since then.