As we continue to see recovery in the market (there is no question that the motorcycle market in Europe is headed in the right direction), but it is important that we don't allow complacency to build based on incomplete analysis and weak comparisons.
It is interesting to note that the OEM manufacturers themselves are now starting to point to 2019 comparables as the best way to realistically assess their performance, and this is something that we argued for back in the April/May edition.
What we do know, as at press time, is that the motorcycle market in Germany is essentially flat for the year-to-date, with new motorcycle registrations up fractionally at +0.72% to 71,384 units for the first six months of this year compared to 2020.
However, at 75,237 registrations for the first six months of 2019, the 2021 German motorcycle market is still lagging - although it is ahead of 2017 and approximately level with 2018.
For June motorcycle registrations were up by +10% in Germany over 2020 (15,422 units). In total PTW terms, Germany was up +6.53% in June at 27,390 as the licence changes start to restore the youth and lower cc markets. The total German PTW market was up by +3.61% at 114,867 units for the first six months.
However, Germany appears to be somewhat of a statistical 'outlier' as Italy, Spain, the UK and, as far as we can tell, France, are all up. For the record, the 'Big Five' national markets between them account for at least 80% of the total European market volume - EU and non-EU.
more than a COVID bounce?
In the case of France, the trade association there (CSIAM) doesn't appear to have updated its statistical reporting (certainly not outside of its membership footprint) since reporting its 2019 full year data in February 2020. At that point it announced that the French market for ICE and electric motorcycles combined was worth some 185,000 units in 2019, which was up by +12% over 2018.
Using a slightly different statistical model, when ACEM reported first quarter data for 2021 (in May) it cited the French market as having been +15.1% (44,691 units January to March 2021) compared to -11.8% (38,839 units) for the first quarter of 2020, with the French market having been -3.3% for the full year 2020 (181,231 units).
New motorcycle registrations in Italy were basically flat in June (+0.38% at 16,951 units), having been +44.26% for May (16,099 units). Indeed, four out of the six months so far in Italy in 2020 are reported as having been up (some of them wildly so as the numbers lap the collapse in sales in some months in the second quarter of 2020), with the YTD +54.95% at 74,541 units compared to the first six months of 2020.
Indeed, the Italian market appears to be the only one of Europe's five 'majors' where 2021 YTD market performance is not only ahead of the first six months of 2020, but also convincingly ahead of 2019 and prior years.
The market had understandably collapsed to just 48,108 units for the first half of 2020, but this year is well ahead of the 63,102 motorcycle unit sales recorded for the comparable period of 2019, with 2021 YTD comfortably the best first six months in Italy since before the 2008 financial crisis. In total PTW terms, Italy is +55.70% compared to the first half of 2020 at 166,551 units (and the 138,902 units sold in the first half of 2019).
By the time you read this, the Spanish statistics for July will probably have been released (ANESDOR is always the quickest out with its data capture results), but for June the motorcycle market in Spain was -11.59% at 18,622 units (having been +55.59% for May at 15,742 units); it is reported at +25.61% for the first six months at 81,990 units, which is still some 6,500 units behind the first six months of 2019. In 2021 total PTW terms, the Spanish market was +24.47% YTD at 90,639 units (compared to 72,821 in 2020 and 97,277 in 2019).
In the UK June was +11.67% at 13,981 units, with the YTD for the first six months running at +31.41% (54,405 units) - still down by approximately 2,000 units over the first six months of 2019.
The days of sales of over 200,000 such units to Europe were last seen in 2007 - 21st century imports from the Japanese home market factories having peaked in 2000 (271,828 units).
In theory, ACEM full year 2020 data shows key European markets as having seen 883,102 motorcycle registrations in 2020, compared to 874,774 in 2019. However, estimates suggest that at least 30,000, possibly as many as 60,000 of those, were Euro 4/5 transition pre-registrations that distorted the data.
Net of those pre-registered motorcycles, European registrations had still recovered surprisingly well in the second half of 2020. The big question that I posed at the start of this year though was whether the market bounce was more than just the making back of lost sales, or whether it could be genuinely new growth as especially more commuters abandon mass transit systems.
Would it be of a scale that would convincingly see PTWs genuinely gain ground over and above pre-pandemic levels as a long-term transport solution of greater choice than before?
With the late 2020 data having been so distorted by Euro 4/5 transition pre-registrations, it may remain some three or four years before we know for sure, in statistical terms. That said though, the possibility is still alive (as seen in the data we do have) that the renewed spotlight thrown onto the social isolation and environmental advantages of PTWs might finally stick.
