THE RISE OF THE ADVENTURE motorcycle is a well-documented fact.
For the past decade or so, BMW’s GS has topped the 125cc+ sales charts – ever since Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman took two BMW R1150GS around the world in 2004, thus triggering the ‘Long Way Round effect’. Other manufacturers have since taken note, following suite with a variety of different sized adv machines.
And now The Bike Insurer has proven just how popular the off-road beasts have become by analysing 10 years of insurance quotes.
According to this data, from 2008 to 2018 there was a 118% increase in adventure bike insurance quotes, dwarfing those for all other larger capacity classes. During the same period, general quotes on The Bike Insurer increased by just 30%.
And the BMW R1200GS – the successor of the 1150 models – is now four times as likely to feature in an insurance quote as it was in 2008, showing a 314% increase in 10 years.
Following the GS in the popularity stakes is the Honda CRF1000L Africa Twin, BMW S1000XR, Yamaha MT-09 Tracer, Triumph Tiger 800 and 1200 models and even the older Triumph Tiger 900.
Kawaski’s Versys 650 and 1000 models and the Suzuki V-Strom 1000, V-Strom 650 and Honda XL1000V Varadero also feature prominently. And among smaller adventure models, the Honda XLV125L Varadero, Honda CB500X and the Honda XL650V Transalp have proven popular.
Official new UK motorcycle registration figures from the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA), support this trend, and show an increase in new registrations in the Adventure Sport class of around 70% over the same 10-year period. Of course, this is figure is lower that The Biker Insurers, as the latter generates insurance quotes for both new and used models.
While Adventure bikes are on the up, the previously popular Supersport category has gone the opposite direction, with a drop of 65% in new bike registrations.
Jade Isabelle, Commercial Director at The Bike Insurer, commented: “Delving into the data The Bike Insurer has access to has been a fascinating way of showing how the UK motorcycle market has changed in the past 10 years, and how the adventure bike class has grown to be the dominant one.
“Even with our knowledge of the UK insurance market we were surprised to see just how massively the adventure bike class has grown in terms of insurance quotes for both new and used bikes.”
