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 +24.67 percent in March (12,511 units) and +14.68 percent for April (12,656 units), making the YTD for the first four months of 2019 +15.52 percent at 39,614 new units registered - the best first four months market performance in Italy since before 2014.
In total PTW terms the Italian market is reported as having been +27.20 percent in March (25,108 total units) and +8.61 percent in the comparatively shorter April (in terms of selling days; 26,854 total units), making the YTD for the first four months of 2019 +15.34 percent at 81,737 total new units registered.
Scooter registrations were +15.18 percent for the first four months of 2019 at 42,123 units registered, with three of the top four best sellers being Honda’s SH 150/300/125 range, selling 8,830 units between them YTD, with Piaggio’s Beverly 300 ABS in third spot (2,906 units), and the Yamaha XMAX 300 in fifth with 1,814 new units registered so far in 2019.
The top selling motorcycle in Italy YTD was the BMW R 1250 GS (1,957 units YTD), followed by Honda’s ‘Africa Twin’ (1,387 units), the Yamaha ‘Tracer’ 900 (1,351 units), the Benelli TRK 502/X (1,188 units sold) and the R 1250 GS Adventure (1,118 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.
