Naked bikes now the UK’s best sellers

The latest figures from our friends at the Motorcycle Industry Association show that new bike sales are up year-on-year again, with nakeds topping the sales, thanks no doubt to machines like the Yamaha MT-09 and MT-07.

Overall UK registrations are up 12.3%, with the biggest increase (23.2%) seen in the 651-1000cc engine capacity. The only sector to drop was 0-50cc, which saw sales of 3953 in May 2014, down from 4084 in May 2013.

The largest sales are still seen in the 51-125cc class, with 14,535 sales in May 2014, up 10.0%. 126cc-650cc increased 6.0%, and bikes over 1000cc were up by 18.6%.

The number of bikers passing their test in 2008/09 was a whopping 70,000. This plummeted to just 32,000 in 2009/10, then has slowly climbed to 45,000 for 2012/13.

In 2009 3.2 billion miles were travelled by bike, but that dropped to 2.8 billion by 2012.

Touring bikes saw an increase of 26.4%  in May 2014 (but are still the slowest sellers, just before sport-tourers), while nakeds shot up by 34.4% and have taken over from Adventure Sports (up 8.2%) and scooters (up 8.7%) as the best-selling powered two wheelers with 9722 registrations.

Trail/Enduro bikes are outstripping sales of touring machines, and increased 4.1%, while the supersport market is up 3.0%, selling more bikes than tourers and sports-tourers put together:

New registrations for May 2014 are as follows:

Naked: 9722

Scooter: 8584

Adventure Sport: 6051

Supersport: 5378

Custom: 3564

Trail/Enduro: 2181

Sport/Touring: 1916

Touring: 1596

Unspecified: 48