It feels a bit 'off' to be talking about routine matters such as the registration stats for the start of the year while freedom and democracy are still under assault here on our own continent. For the record though, motorcycle sales have started well in 2022 - possibly in response to the spikes in petrol prices as much as anything else.
Those price increases are not, or at least were not initially (or principally), triggered by the war in Ukraine. However, as the conflict looks set to deepen and lengthen, it might well be that - rather like the effects of the pandemic on consumer attitudes to urban mobility in 2020 - the motorcycle market in 2022 could again be an unwitting beneficiary. This time as international wholesale petroleum prices continue to harden in response to supply uncertainties as well as increased demand.
The latest new motorcycle registrations data available from the national trade associations for four of Europe's 'Big Five' markets (which between them account for some 80% of annual registrations) show 2022 starting strongly.
For once, the comparables are not distorted by any (or certainly not many) regulatory issues. The start of 2021 was impacted by the final stages of the long drawn-out transition from Euro 4 to 5 - one that affected two or three year ends.
At press time, we had January and February data for Italy, Germany and the UK, and January to March (Q1) data for Spain.
In the case of all, except Germany, the start of 2022 is up on the beginning of 2021, up on the start of 2020, up on the start of 2019 (crucially) and equally significantly ahead of any comparable period since the financial crisis triggered a meltdown in the period between 2007 and 2013.
reserve me a place at the barricade
In the case of Germany, so far this year the market is up over 2021 (by better than 22% in fact), but still down by around 1,500 units over 2020 and some 500 units over 2019. That said, the start to this year has still been the third best in Germany in more than a decade.
In the interests of completeness, the Spanish market for Q1 is up by nearly 17%, in Italy by nearly 26%, and Germany by better than 22% - with the UK data clearly being anomalous, posting +76.30% for the first two months of 2022 after recording a massive and much delayed Euro 5 statistical hit at the start of 2021; with Brexit issues also complicating everything to do with UK statistics at that point - for all markets and industries.
Leaving the detail in the wing mirror, any way you look at it, the data represents a whole bunch more helmet, apparel, boots and glove sales volume for dealers and their vendors, and a nice increase in the 'Park' for interval service and, eventually, repair and upgrade spending. Up is up at the end of the day, and up is good. We like up!
All that said, the most certain of certainties remains the age-old time-honoured cliché that uncertainty is the only thing we can be sure about.
There is no telling how the war in Ukraine is going to play out, but there is no such thing as a "good" outcome for anyone in such circumstances - for either of the combatants nor for anybody else.
As yet, the effects of conflict contagion are unknown, and probably won't be fully understood until some time after the conflict is resolved. Whatever the end does look like and whenever that comes, for sure there will be contagion of some kind. There always is.
This is no Syria or Sudan, no Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. It isn't even directly comparable in continental European terms to the Balkans mash-up when Yugoslavia dissolved into rivalry and anarchy.
Compared to the other conflicts we have seen around the world in the past three or four decades, there are some similarities though. That sequence of wars in Europe started out as conflict between what had been provinces of an artificially unified single Balkan mega-state. It was here in our midst in Europe, and it too was an example of the failure of the parties on either side of the Cold War to resolve opposing ideologies and world views.
The West may have thought it had won the war, but even thirty years on, it certainly has still not yet managed to win the peace.
Personally, I have always been 'bullish' where defence of democratic and liberal values are concerned, where freedom is concerned - reserve me a place at the barricade!
You don't have to be a PhD student of history to understand that it is generally as much the interests of trade that have taken us into wars as anything else, and those same interests are what generally, eventually, takes us out of them too. It is wealth that has driven successful outcomes where nationalist, ideological or imperial rivalries have been concerned. They who spend most, win most.
Western politicians are often guilty of not giving the production of surplus the place of primacy in the affairs of man that it warrants. While it is good to see the "allies" reaching for the spreadsheets before the shells this time round, as with pregnancy, war is something in which trying to be a little bit successful is not a viable strategy.
Every time the EU, NATO, UN, G7/G20 talk about applying even more sanctions against the aggressor, my unfiltered automatic reaction is to ask why we left anything on the table in the first place? The weaker we are, the higher the number of people who will end up paying the ultimate price and the harder (and more expensive) it will be to stabilise the world once it is over.
There are no quick, easy single answers, but it is utterly beholden on the world to find the most effective combination of answers and apply them to the max - and do so as quickly as possible - and that includes boots on the ground and planes in the air if there is no other way of ending it quickly.
Yes, switching off the flow of gas and oil, minerals and ores, coal and grain will be expensive - but time is money, and the sooner we embrace what it takes to get this ended, whatever that is, then the sooner we'll be able to get back to selling all parties our bright and shiny things.
If we think trying to win is expensive in terms of lives, treasure expended and potential bigger picture risk is concerned, it will be as nothing compared to failing to win.
