Another Dealer Goes To The Wall

Amazing. Some of the greediest gits going. Always seemed a bit up themselves whenever l went in....won't miss them one iota personally

 

Also see Harley at Winersh have disappeared.

 

I bought my Scrambler from them in March. They arranged a test ride the same day and gave me quite a reasonable deal. They also did my first (600m) service at parts cost only, promptly while I waited so can't say anything bad about them TBH, unlike another more local dealer who cancelled a pre arranged test ride on the morning I was due to take it as they hadn't been able to get the bike through the workshop in time. P*ssed off didn't cover it.

 

Another just closed in Bridgend, Completely Bikes, formerly ThunderRoad. £17.1m business reckoned to have closed down due to a slowdown in sales through the summer. Receivers called in looking to restructure as it’s across 3 locations I believe.

 

SMC in Sheffield closed a few weeks ago. The guy who owned it also has a classic bike shop just out of town and apparently he wants to concentrate on that side of the business.

 

I mentioned elsewhere that Saltire Motorcycles in Edinburgh have closed, but maybe it is not just dealerships who are struggling. I saw this in an internet news article -

"Pierer Mobility AG, which owns motorcycle brands like KTM and MV Agusta, is now facing such severe financial difficulties that management is working on a rescue plan.
The Austrian motorcycle brand KTM, along with its family brands GASGAS, Husqvarna, and MV Agusta, is in financial trouble."

I read recently that VW Group are looking at closing 3 factories in Germany and/or cutting staff and wages. Also, Jaguar have now stopped selling cars, planning a theoretical relaunch in 2026 as an all EV brand.

Tough times, tough decisions......

 

KTM is in a spot of bother too.
https://www.crash.net/motogp/news/1060779/1/ktm-attempts-stave-bankruptcy-restructuring

 

Surely KTM will have to pull the plug on their Moto gp efforts if they are that deep in the sh1t!? Has their corporate greed led to all this? Buying up smaller brands when the going was good and then creating an unmanageable monster? Sad for their workforce especially at this time of year.

 

I think a lot of the problems that the bike industry is now facing, is purely down to the cost of the bikes. Lets face it with the bikes out today, how many people ( Me included ) really need all this technology on their bikes. I've ABS on my V Strom 650, and that's it. Do you really need all these modes on bike, if it's raining I slow down and take extra care, I don't need a computer to do it for me. Maybe because I've always had bikes that have none of these so called aides, that I just don't see the need in it all. But if other people like them, then I'm nobody to criticise them for buying a bike with the whole 9 yards on it.

 

Modern bikes are complex and expensive, but I think that's only part of a bigger problem. The people who ride them (us!) are in the main older 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's (mebbe a few diehards in their 80's?) and as we get closer to the end of life's conveyor belt, our desire , motivation or ability to ride diminishes. There are younger people of course buying bikes, but compared to the 60's, 70's and 80's (I'm talking 20th century decades now) there are comparatively few. I think the target audience, for want of a better term, is rapidly evaporating. Dealerships therefore are searching around for fewer and fewer clientele and so closures are inevitable IMHO.

 

I reckon you’re right, then add to the mix some of us who have owned brand new bikes then sold them for whatever reason and jumped on the retro band wagon and realised that our road condition and driving standards being what they are in the U.K. how relevant is a 160mph track scalpel any more?

 

I sold a 4 year old MT10 for best part of £9k and got a useable classic T595 finished and on the road for £1500 and for the enjoyment that gives me (plus a little annoyance due to shit previous owners doing stupid shit) the T5 is a joy to ride and has stacks of torque and people actually want to talk about her instead of just walking past a brand new bike and not knowing one from another. It doesn’t have the idiocy of riding the MT10 (which I slightly miss) but it’s a bike with enough torque to make every ride memorable.

 

Yes spoke to the peeps at Bulldog yesterday. They said they were still doing well. But wary now about buying used bikes or to many of them.

 

I just read that Ariel have stopped making motorcycles - OK, it's a niche brand, a bit weird (?), and way too expensive for most of us I would imagine, but it's another bike brand, and a British one, lost.

 

Sadly this is going to continue, with the price of bikes reaching, and sometimes exceeding the price of a car, it's a no brainer really. People will have a view about the merits good or bad, of buying a Chinese made bike, and how reliable they are going to be, but take a look at the 900 Voge and then price up the Tiger 900 to the same specification ( or as near as you can ) if you really can't afford the Tiger, then the Voge 900 seems like a good bet. I sat on the Voge 900 at the bike show, and I must admit I liked it a lot. Only time will tell if they're going to be reliable. It looks like the Chinese may already have made the bike makers think about their pricing, just look at the Hornet 1000 SP from Honda, for just under £10,000 That's a lot of bike for a very reasonable amount of money I think. Then there's Royal Enfield, they are turning out some cracking looking bikes, like the Classic 650, I love the look of that bike.

 

Even Royal Enfield prices are climbing - look at a chrome Classic 650 and you are a kick in the pants off £7,000, that's only about £300 less that a 750 Honda Hornet.

Different type of bike I know, but I also know which will last longer and get a higher trade in, and that is something a comparison of bare prices won't always show up.....

 

When you put it like that. That's a valued point indeed.
Best you stop and think of all the options available before someone buys a new bike.

 

It's not the cost of machines that is responsible for the slowdown in the bike market IMO, it's the cost of everything else like getting a licence in the first place before you even consider the extortionate cost of insurance, then there's all the riding gear of course.

The older riders among us will remember a time when the test was cheap and easy and insurance was never a problem and was affordable. I passed on a 250 and went straight to a 1300. The smallest road bike I've ever owned was a Fireblade at 893cc. I just wasn't interested in small or middleweight road machines and I'm still not.
Current laws and costs make that virtually impossible now so manufacturers have had to concentrate on smaller, cheaper to buy/insure/run machines like the current crop of 400's.

There'll always be a demand for 200mph road rockets but unless you're a low volume, specialist company making bespoke machines, it's not big enough any more to make them a cost effective option on their own for the bigger manufacturers.