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The records are not tumbling anymore
This month marks an important anniversary for the motorcycle industry in Europe . We are now ten years on from the post Lehman apocalypse Great Recession motorcycle industry business cycle nadir in September and October 2014 . That was the point when , having hit rock bottom and been bouncing along the rocky bottom of a broad U-curve , the market started to see the first green shoots of recovery . Founded in 1844 by German immigrant Henry Lehman , Lehman Brothers was a Wall Street stalwart . A storied , revered and hugely respected investment bank , stockbroker and financial services conglomerate . The fourth largest investment bank in the USA was also a mortgage underwriting powerhouse . Therein lay the toxin surging through its balance sheet . That was when the sub-prime home loan industry in the USA , and the chicken-intosteak derivatives trading smoke and mirrors on which it was based , brought global financial markets crashing down and set in motion a cascade of system failure that still shapes the business expectations of the world in which we trade today . Lehman saw its stock lose some 97 % of its value on Friday , September 12 , 2008 , as it became clear that it , and the Wall Street partners it traded with , couldn ' t cover their debt obligations . The dreaded ' margin call '. The result was a bankruptcy filing on Monday , September 15 , 2008 , and who can forget the sight of overpaid traders walking out of their offices clutching their leaving boxes . The financial shocks reverberated around the financial capitals of the world , and in the shape of Basel I , II and III and other ' too little , too late ' New Gen banking regulations that are supposed to protect liquidity , literally still do shape the contemporary banking culture that drives lending and credit policies worldwide . The Lehman collapse wasn ' t the only ' trigger ' that brought the global financial system down like a deck of cards . It wasn ' t even the first in that ' Great Unwind ', nor was it the last . But the resulting ' Great Recession ', as it quickly became known , was deep and intense - often referenced as the most severe recession since the Great Depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street collapse . However , in the United States at least , it didn ' t really last all that long , certainly not relative to that depth and intensity . By 2010 , the good ship USA had righted itself , with shares and much else recovering the lost ground by 2012 . The process in America was far from pain-free , but in Europe it was especially acute - even the financial morphine of ' Quotative Easing ' took years to restore growth , jobs and the flow of capital . Europe was slower into it than the USA , but was also much slower to recover from the much deeper turmoil it unleashed here . It destroyed lives , it destroyed whole industries . Those ( like ours ) that are dependent on discretionary leisure Dollar spending were bang in the crosshairs . In terms of new motorcycle registrations , the market in Europe basically halved and very nearly halved again in the course of six years . It may have been a slow haemorrhaging , but that didn ' t stop it being a messy one . The decline didn ' t even start to really stabilise until January 2014 , and it wasn ' t until Q3 that year that we started to see those ubiquitous first green shoots of recovery . To this day I well remember Reiner Brendicke , the ( excellent and still ) head of the
looking through the lens of now
IVM in Germany , standing before a news conference at INTERMOT in October , saying that in its statistical gather it had started to detect the very slightest and lightest evidence of a possible and very modest uptick in registrations in Germany . So , here we are , exactly a decade later , and how did that early indicator play out ? Did the green shoots grow ? Well yes , they did . Relative to the six years that had gone before , the six years until March 2020 saw a spectacular recovery . We gradually saw a return to market growth through the period from 2015 to 2019 . It wasn ' t all smooth riding . The growth stalled a couple of times , but overall , and with no little thanks to the efforts of the national trade associations , the team at ACEM in Brussels and the major European OEMs , the motorcycle industry managed to pull it back - halfway back at any rate . In that time , Europe ' s dealers were chronically short of inventory capital though . Banks weren ' t lending and manufacturers were very slow , careful and deliberate about how they built back , and what kind of machines they built back with . By the end of 2019 , we had started to see regular new highs , new records , at least in post Lehman apocalypse timescale terms , in some cases back to the early noughties and late 1990s . Then the blind panic of Covid . Followed by a Covid bounce that was especially kind to our industry - irrationally so maybe , but hey , we were happy to take it , right ? Since then though , more panic . Supply chain issues and costs . Freight issues and costs . The little matter of Russia ' s ongoing invasion of Ukraine . Then energy crisis , inflation , interest rate rises and collapse in growth it triggered . Plus , all the other uncertainties that are still writing our script . Compared to the rock bottom that sales hit in 2014 , a decade later and motorcycle registrations have recovered . But as someone said to me a while ago , don ' t be fooled , compared to where we were 20 years ago , now all we have is half a recession . It ' s true . The industry has still not recovered the ground from when it was a runaway train 20 to 30 years ago , and likely never will , but in most of the major markets we have seen national motorcycle registrations and manufacturer production numbers breaking records - quarter after quarter , year after year . But oh my , what a delicate balancing act the next 24 months are going to be ! As per this month ' s cover story , the ' Growth Meister Powerhouse ' that Stefan Pierer has turned KTM into has seen that growth stall . There ' s a similar ( though not identical ) story at BMW , and at Ducati , and at Piaggio . Neither is all yet as rosy as we need it to be in the Japanese factory balance sheets . Ten more years of continuing record motorcycle sales numbers ? Hmmm , at present it is really hard to see that ' through the lens of now ', and I haven ' t even touched on the environmental and electrification issues that confront us .
Robin Bradley Publisher robin @ dealer-world . com