The latest data released by ANCMA, the motorcycle industry trade association in Italy, shows the Italian motorcycle and scooter market continuing to grow, though as elsewhere, sales dipped in May.
New motorcycle registrations are down -4.99% in May (12,588 units), having been +24.67% (12,511 units) and +14.68% (12,656 units) in March and April respectively. For the YTD new motorcycle registrations were up +9.80% at 52,202 units - the strongest first five months Italy has seen since before 2014.
In total PTW terms the Italian market is reported as having been +27.26 percent in March (25,119 total units) and +8.84 percent in April (in terms of selling days; 26,911 total units), but down -10.62% in May at 28,579 units, meaning that PTW registrations for the YTD for the first five months of 2019 were +7.34% at 110,385 units - the strongest Italian market performance since 2012.
Scooter registrations were +5.22% for the first five months of 2019 at 58,183 units registered, with three of the top four best sellers being Honda's Italian made SH 150/300/125 range, selling 12,096 units between them YTD, with Piaggio’s Beverly 300 ABS in third spot (4,035 units) and the Liberty 124 ABS fifth (2,465 units), just ahead of Yamaha's XMAX 300 with 2,399 new units registered so far in 2019. Honda's X-ADV 750 was next (2,177 units).
The top selling motorcycle in Italy YTD was the BMW R 1250 GS (2,465 units YTD), followed by Honda’s ‘Africa Twin’ (1,834 units), the Yamaha ‘Tracer’ 900 (1,664 units), the Benelli TRK 502/X (1,609 units), the R 1250 GS Adventure (1,426 units) and the Honda NC 750 X (1,122 units).
For the full year of 2018 the Italian motorcycle market was reported at +12.73 percent (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.
