UK Motorcycle sales set to conclude 2019 on the up… just

Sales of motorcycles in the UK are set to end 2019 higher than they did in 2018 despite another slide in November compared with twelve months ago.

After a strong start to the year relative to 2018, sales have remained positively up overall over the course of 2019 but the gap has been narrowing in recent months after a drop in August, October and now November.

Continuing the trend of recent months, big motorcycle sales suffered most with a -2.8% November 2019 slip in sales (5512 units) compared with November 2018 (5668 units), but this was softened to -2.4% due to a rise in moped sales.

That brings the annual total after 11 months up to 102,413 sales, which represents a +1.7% gain on 2018 at the same stage (100,674 units).

As such, barring a significant against-trend plummet of sales in December, the UK motorcycle industry is set to see a small but welcome increase over 2018.

Best-selling motorcycles in the UK for November 2019

Broken down into categories Adventure Sport and Sport/Tour models enjoyed an uplift in sales – +7.1% and +4.9% year-on-year – but were undermined by a big drop in Touring (-23.8%) and Supersport (-6.3%).

Among the brands, Honda maintains its stranglehold on the UK market with 1,396 of its ‘H’ badged two-wheelers finding homes in November, more than double that of its nearest competitor Yamaha on 667 sales.

Nevertheless, it was Yamaha that ended the month with the best-selling model with the Yamaha NMAX 125 scooter selling 203 units individually. Others to top their class included the Honda CB 125F in the naked category, the BMW R 1250 GS Adventure and R 1250 RT leading the Adventure Sport and Touring categories and Lexmoto’s broad range of mopeds leading in that range.

Those sales lifted the Chinese firm to third in the brand charts ahead of BMW, KTM, Triumph and Kawasaki

One interesting note was that the new Triumph Street Triple RS emerged as November's best-selling motorcycle in the 651-1000cc power band.