SEPTEMBER proved a bad month for sales of bikes over 500cc, with new registrations falling by 9 percent to 4711 units when compared with September last year.
A pre-registration drive from Suzuki, Honda and BMW dealers failed to lift the market, although Honda and BMW were largely able to maintain their sales - Honda's sales improving by over 3 percent, and BMW registering just four bikes fewer than it did in September of last year.
Despite being the top-selling manufacturer in September with 872 registrations, Suzuki sales were still down by a surprising 24 percent on last September's 1155 units sold.
The big winner was Ducati, who registered 326 bikes in September, a whopping 44 percent increase in the same month in 2011.
But perhaps the real story is the long term numbers for the year to date, 500cc registrations for the first 9 months were down 5.7 percent to 33,784.
Despite continuing to lead the sector, Triumph sales are down six percent (6479 units) as are those of BMW (4818 units) and Kawasaki (3818 units). Honda sales are down one percent (5119 units sold) for the year to date.
The only brands to increase registrations over the first nine months are Yamaha (up 14 percent), Ducati (up four percent) and KTM (up 31 percent).
In constrast to a decline in sales of bigger bikes, this year has demonstrated significant improvements in the 125cc scooter sector. Scooter sales in June were up by 21.1 per cent compared with June 2011, which itself was a similarly significant gain over the previous year's numbers.
