The world as we know it is changing every single day. The life we lead is a series of twists and turns which we have no way to predict (those psychics in the National Enquirer or Weekly World News, of course, excepted). Things change and then change again. It was not that long ago that we would buy our gasoline with lead additives – do you remember the old gas attendant asking ‘regular or unleaded’ as you hand him your MasterCharge card? (If not, your parents certainly will.) And, who can forget paying your bills via snail mail? It’s all online now, at least for the non-Luddites among us. In the motorcycle industry, we now have a large percentage of bikes – street and off-road - with fuel injection; something unimaginable, or at least prohibitively expensive, only some ten to fifteen years ago. It is an age of change, sometimes fast and disruptive, but usually in a positive direction when it is something we actually design, engineer and produce (there are, of course, exceptions – see Ford Pinto). It is the changes which come about as natural progressions of our working and living on this planet which often have the most far reaching effects, and the sad part of these massive changes is that we tend to not see them coming; not because we cannot predict them – people make a living doing that – but because we all-too-often deny the existence of these transformations until they are right in front of us, tapping on our chest. For instance, the growth of China has been 
coming at us since the early 1970’s – and many people studying the nation knew this all too well – and now they own a substantial amount of the US debt; not many people believed that would ever be possible. Then there is climate change…it’s here, but need we discuss it here? Some other forum, please…here we are interested in what the world economy refers to as powered two-wheelers. We riders usually designate that category “motorcycles and scooters.”
India is not far away from China in economic terms – both have similar sized populations and both are seeing rather high growth rates. The Republic of India, as the Subcontinent is officially known, is also the world’s largest democracy; it has held this title since independence form Great Britain in 1947. The current population estimate is somewhere near 1.2 billion human beings – that is more than four times the population of the United States of America and more than twice the number of people in the entire European Union. The rise in the Indian GDP (Gross Domestic Product), even in the middle of the global recession, was an astounding 6.7%. For comparison, the US growth rate during that same period was around 3% (with some growth periods in the negative). By most measures, India is the fourth largest economy in the world as of 2009. Of course, the standard of living in the Asian nation is not as high as that in the US, yet. At least partially due to this (and the many, many other contributing factors), motorcycles are a primary form of transport for many 
Indian families; bikes are inexpensive, efficient, easy to store and much easier to drive on the rather poorly-maintained roads throughout both urban and rural areas. Thus, many people purchase motorcycles and scooters instead of the more expensive – and less-efficient - automobiles.
Less than 12% of Indian households have personal transport – of course, that is still nearly 140,000,000 vehicles, 85% of which are motorcycles or scooters. That’s just over half of the total US vehicle ownership of around 230,000,000, but only about 4% of the US number is powered two-wheelers. If only motorcycles and scooters are considered when comparing the two nations, we are looking at about 119,000,000 Indian versus 9,000,000 US riders – a very significant difference. The European Union, on the other hand has around 36,000,000 powered two-wheelers on their usually well-groomed roads and highways. If you add those figures from the US and Europe together, you get the numbers for the current focus market driving motorcycle development – around 45 million two-wheelers. You must multiply that by just over 2.6 to get the number of bikes and scooters on the roads of India only; if you include the other large markets for motorcycles in Asia, the number just explodes (remember that China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, etc. are included in Asian sales figures.) Numbers equal sales, and thus profits, for the companies involved in the production of such machines; thus, as is evidenced by the statistics above, India has a significantly larger customer base than the US and Europe combined.
Several large motorcycle companies have had a presence in India for many years now. Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Suzuki all have 
factories on the subcontinent and there are many joint ventures (JV) with domestic Indian companies and the Big Four which produce even more motorcycles and often have the same engine and frame as the Japanese marques’ machines. Thus, the local JV companies compete against each other in the market with the same base model, but with different configurations – it seems a bit odd compared to the US market, but it works in a market as large as India. These companies sell several different models across a broad range of motorcycle styles; everything from sport to cruisers and beyond. Most of the sales have been in the small displacement categories, usually between 85 and 200cc, but the market has now been opened up to the larger, and far more powerful, large displacement machines. Harley-Davidson has a presence in five large Indian cities now, Ducati opened dealerships within the last year in two of those cities (even Nicky Hayden was on hand), and the storied Yamaha VMAX – with a pavement-melting 200HP - went on sale there earlier in 2010. These larger bikes, of course, are priced quite high relative to the average 125cc single two-wheeler, and that does put them out of reach of most of the population. However, the burgeoning Indian middle class has a great deal more disposable income than they had even a few years back, and their numbers are growing very fast. All you have to do to see where this trend is going is do a little reading. Read any press release from an Indian division of any motorcycle company and the same refrain runs through them all – sales increasing, model options getting better, stable, rising profits, more factories to be built – happy faces in the marketing, accounting, and sales departments of them all. And, even the engineering departments are flush with funds to build phenomenal new machines for India and the Asian markets.
Can you see where this is going yet? Just to be sure, let’s look at one final example from the current leader of the Japanese corporate giants, Honda. Simple numbers should suffice here – The US, Canada and Mexico (meaning North America) account for 1.7% of total Honda sales, India accounts for 14% of total sales. It may seem like a small difference, but that is an absolute number of over one million vehicles – if you 
were in charge, wouldn’t you want to get into a market where you sell a million more of something? If you throw in all of the vast Asian nations in which Honda sells motorcycles, you see that the entire rest of the world shares less than 2% of the total number of powered two-wheelers which Honda produces in all of their factories throughout the world.
So, imagine how you would distribute your resources if you were one of the worldwide motorcycle marques? Which market do you think you would turn to when looking to make a big splash with a fancy new product – with a focus, of course, on profit? As of this moment, the European and North American markets are mature and currently have a lock on the more important development money, but do not expect that to last much longer. The world is on a path to yet another adjustment which we should have seen approaching for a long while now, and which will alter the way our favorite sport is focused. Even Valentino Rossi is behind putting at least one MotoGP race in India very soon, and that is moving forward as you read this. It will do much better there than it did in China as India is not likely to put so many restrictions on purchasing tickets for the locals; they will want to sell tickets. Having a world-class motorcycle race event in the nation will almost certainly drive more sales.
India’s consumption will guide a great deal of motorcycle production over coming decades, whether we like it or not. There will be some
crossover as well; they will likely import some of the smaller, yet rather well-styled, motorcycles to other markets if they find that they will sell. (The bikes for the Indian market are designed to look faster and tougher, depending on model, than they actually are; many times a great deal of supersport-style plastic fairing covers a 100cc engine.) These models sell very well to new and experienced riders alike, but even that is likely to change with the larger-displacement motorcycles now coming into India; we all long for the fastest or sweetest-looking bike in the neighborhood. It is these larger and more powerful machines which will turn the heads of industry towards the Subcontinent and Asia as many more of them start selling into the market than in any previous financial quarter. That will be the beginning of a ‘golden age’ for the manufacturers who gain entry and a time of…well, the unknown, for markets such as the US. This is a time when many economists believe our American economy will stick at near 10% unemployment for the foreseeable future. Now, even Europe is in the middle of its own ‘market correction’ and unemployment continues to rise there. Our own home-made marques will have little choice but to rely on other markets for their revenue. While the recession was destroying North American sales for them in 2008, Harley-Davidson was still selling their classic machines to the world markets – sales only 
started to fall off once the recession spread throughout our interconnected trade networks. Even in Dubai you can buy a Victory Vegas, which is made in the lovely Midwestern town of Spirit Lake, Iowa. The world is moving forward.
What can we take away from this? There may not be an answer for that just yet. We may be in for some serious re-alignment in the motorcycle industry, or it may all just blow over as the economy stabilizes near where it is now (or better, hopefully). Decisions, large and small, on the behalf of both the customers and the manufacturers will lay out the path the industry takes. Even the buying public in the smaller markets, like North America and Europe, will give the sales and marketing people data which they need in order to produce the motorcycles we want to buy and ride. The real questions cannot be answered now, but we do need to ask ourselves what we are going to do when we start to see bikes designed for a larger – and far distant - market becoming the ‘flagships’ of the various marques. Those bikes will become the main hub for development and advertising
monies and other product lines will become secondary, thus only benefiting from technology derived from the more important models. Will we only see the latter machines for sale at our dealerships or on the roads of North America? Or, will we be buying enough of the higher-spec motorcycles to satisfy the manufacturers who sell into this market? We do not know that yet…only time will tell us where this will go. Until then, all we can do is keep buying motorcycles and be grateful for what choice we already have – because it is an awesome array of motorcycles from which to choose; better than any time in history. If the two-wheeled world is to pass North America by, there is not much we riders can do beyond continuing to enjoy the road ahead with as much vigor as possible – GET OUT AND RIDE!
