Remember the days when a new rider could jump on Craigslist and pick up a Ninja 250 for $1200, drop it a couple times, get their confidence up and flip it for $1200 to another new rider?

A lot has changed.

The beginning of the end was probably when Craigslist stopped free motorcycle listings in 2019. People with cheap bikes for sale don’t want to pay to list them. Then the pandemic happened.

Prices are out of control. The used market is so high, buying new often makes more financial sense even with the fees all dealers charge. The only problem is that you can’t stroll into a dealership and buy one. Either way, the cost of entry has skyrocketed. Sure, there are supply issues and demand for motorcycles has gone up for the first time in forever. That does little to console someone in their teens or early 20s who wants to dip their toe into the two-wheel pool. The new rider is not typically the one with a ton of disposable income. How is the motorcycle industry supposed to follow Big Tobacco’s tried and true strategy of “start them young” if they can’t afford one?

In order to have a used market, someone has to be buying new bikes. If the new bikes cost more, they take longer to save up to purchase or have larger monthly payments. Those of us who move through bikes quickly or own multiple, can’t buy as many or as often. We see what our current fleet is ‘worth’ on the used market and list ours for the same when it is time to sell. We don’t feel like we are leaving money on the table. The bike is slow to sell because it is overpriced and we can’t buy another one until it does. Or we don’t buy at all because we refuse to pay ADM (a topic for another day).

Harley Davidson is intentionally limiting supply by cutting output to increase margin on each unit sold. The strategy is short-sighted and doomed to fail. Harley already had an issue with their target demographic aging out. They are famous for going after the same population of people who currently make enough money to afford their bikes but young people aren’t interested. You could argue their Revolution Max engines are the future but existing fans don’t really like it and HD’s image turns off other potential buyers. If they really wanted to change, they would not have abandoned their attempt at courting the Indian (country, not the Polaris subsidiary) market in 2020.

The world is not the USA. Most manufacturers sell more bikes in Asian countries than they could ever dream of selling in the USA. If we price new riders out of the market and they don’t get hooked, the market will eventually collapse. Manufacturers will abandon the US and focus on markets where their profits are driven by volume instead of MSRP. Contrary to how we feel, we aren’t entitled to new motorcycles.

If I were a new rider starting out now, I don’t know what I would do. There really aren’t that many entry-level bikes available for a reasonable price that don’t have a branded title, are newer than 30 years old or ‘ran when parked 15 years ago.’ I could put a deposit down on something at a dealership. I could wait it out until the market calms down if it ever does. I could find another way to spend my money before the dealer delivers or prices reduce. How patient do we expect a new rider to be before they are able to scratch that itch or look elsewhere?

We are both the problem and the solution. We don’t have to charge more than MSRP for used motorcycles when we sell them. We don’t have to buy from scalpers who buy new bikes and then try to flip them for ton of profit. And we don’t have to buy from dealers who charge ADM. We can let go of our collective FOMO and allow new riders a chance to join in on the fun.

Easier said than done.

I hope I can come back to this topic in a year or so with an improved landscape and a plethora of new rider-friendly bikes on the market for reasonable prices.