The latest data released by ANCMA, the motorcycle industry trade association in Italy, shows the Italian motorcycle and scooter market continuing to grow.
New motorcycle registrations are reported as being +7.09 percent in January (6,586 units) and +11.16 percent for February (7,861 units), making the YTD for the first two months of 2019 +9.26 percent at 14,447 units registered.
In total PTW terms, the Italian market is reported as having been +3.81 percent in January (13,545 total units) and +19.98 percent in February (16,020 total units), making the YTD for the first two months of 2019 +12.11 percent at 29,597 total units registered.
Scooter registrations were +14.96 percent for the first two months of 2019 at 15,150 units registered, with the top sellers being Honda's SH 150/300/125 range, selling 3,871 units between them YTD; followed by Piaggio's Beverly 300 ABS (919 units) and Liberty 125 ABS (656 units).
The top selling motorcycle in Italy YTD was the BMW R 1250 GS (843 units), followed by Honda's 'Africa Twin' (591 units), the Yamaha 'Tracer' 900 (447 units), the R 1250 GS Adventure (445 units) and the Benelli TRK 502/X (393 units).
For the full year of 2018 the Italian motorcycle market was reported at +12.73 (92,991 units) and +7.35 percent in total PTW registration terms (219,465 units) - however, as with other of Europe's markets, while the unit numbers for 2018 made good reading, some caution needs to be used when judging the apparent year-on-year percentage market growth compared to 2017 because of the several thousands of pre-registered Euro 3 models registered in late 2016 that were actually sold 'as new' by dealers in early 2017 - meaning that the real numbers for 2017 were higher than officially recorded.
