Hungarian motorcycle market: hit by the crisis but immune to the coronavirus

English2021. jan. 3.Növekedés.hu

Domestic motorcycle dealers may have closed a better year in 2020 than the year before; the pandemic does not seem to have pushed back sales as much as in the case of new cars, János Mező, editor-in-chief of Motorrevü told növekedés.hu, adding that the economic crisis in 2008 had hit the Hungarian motorcycle market so hard that substantial growth only started in the past two years.

The car market plummeted due to the epidemic. Has it become harder to sell motorcycles as well?
This goes back to 2008 when the Hungarian motorcycle market collapsed .
In the year before the economic crisis nearly 20 thousand large motorcycles, i . e . bigger than 125 cc were sold alone , excluding 50 cc smaller bikes and scooters.
In the course of one year, this number fell below 2,000, w hich meant that sales dropped to virtually ten percent.
The situation did not get much better f or a while , with sales barely gr owing one or two percent every year , which is almost nothing.
2018 was the first year when we saw a reasonable growth , with a little over three thousand vehicles having been sold in that year . Then came 2019 with nearly four thousand, which was still only a quarter of what it had been before the crisis, but progress was visible, and even the coronavirus couldn’t ruin that . In 2020 we managed to sell 3,444 motorbikes by the end of October, so we have a good chance of surpassing the previous year despite the pandemic .
Then we can say that while the economic crisis hit the motorcycle ma rket h ard , the coronavirus did not …
Yes, and I don’t even rule out that the positive change is some how related to the coronavirus epidemic. In January , February and March 2019 , there was a sharp rise in sales, and exactly the same was happening in 2020 . And although there was a slight decline at the peak of the spring lockdown in March and April, growth started again with nearly five hundred pieces sold in May.
In our experience the spring months and the end of the year tend to be generally strong, but in 2020 we managed to surpass the previous year ’s result in August, as well as in September and October.
It ’s too early to say if all this was due to or in spite of the epidemic, but it is certain that the motorcycle market was not nearly as adversely affected by the coronavirus as car sales.
T he motorcycle is a leisure product, so probably the lockdown in the spring made many people feel like buy ing one and setting off …
In the spring, however, there were also a few negative factors. We heard from many sources that there was an increasing number of police action s against motorcyclists, as if they were gently discouraging people from motorcycl ing . In contrast to Australia, for example, where people were explicitly encouraged to ride, as a recreational activity. The situation in Hungary does not encourage impulse purchases anyway.
Has the market throughout the whole of Europe resisted the epidemic in the same way?
After 2008 development started everywhere, but if we look at the numbers for the whole continent, th ey were s et back by the coronavirus . We have to add, though, that in Western Europe the economic crisis of 2008 had not cause d the motorcycle market to fall as sharply a s it did in Hungary , so the market there did not have to climb back from so deep. T he pan demic c aused some uncertainty in the normal course of business, instead ; and the E uro 5 standard coming into force is another issue now , leading to a lot of confusion among manufacturers, who are lobbying for the postponement of its introduction .
You mentioned that the domestic environment d id not encourage impulse purchases. Why is that so ?
Because it is extremely c omplicated and also not very cheap to get a specific series registered . T he circumstances are different when selling a car : several pieces are sold from each model and car dealerships have their own testing facilities , so the whole process is much smoother. In contrast, a motorcycle to be sold must be taken to one of the relatively few test cent re s in order to get it registered . In Budapest there are two such cent re s as far as I know; the test centres in Mozaik Street and Vas Gereben Street.
In addition, a few months ago the Mozaik Street Centre was involved in a case of corruption ; the tax authority also investigated and a few people were even arrest ed.
After that incident, there were only two officials in charge of all the tasks for a while .
A dealer told me the other day that if he sold a motorcycle now, he could only get a registration test d ate for the mid dle o r end of March, until which time , of course, the buyer wouldn ’t be able to use his motorcycle.
T his cumbersome and lengthy procedure discourages the majority of seasonal and impulse buyers , who obviously don’t want to wait for months to get on their bike . Not to mention th e fact that the state is also losing with this extraordinarily complicated and inflexible system. Let’s t ake, for example, a motorcy c le with a gross price of one million forints - the importer and the reseller together earn less than ten percent of this price, i . e . their profit is below 100 thousand forints, while the state's revenue exceeds 300 thousand . Therefore, the state should have a vested interest in help ing as many motor bikes to be registered as possible.
How would you suggest decision makers should boost the motorcycle market ?
It is a well known fact that transport is a problem in big cities. A car occupies three to four square met re s or even more, with one person travel l ing in most of them. On the other hand, a motorbike fits in a small space, it can move more easily in traffic jams , and in addition, it uses less fuel and has a lower impact on the environment . Motorcyclists in the city also avoid the stress of getting stuck in slow moving traffic and tailbacks.
Besides cycling, motorcycling could also be supported in Budapest , thus easing the traffic situation.
The state could subsidize the purchase of 125 cc bikes , which is definitely not luxury or hobby category yet , as price s in this category range between 600 thousand and 1.5 million forints. However, it has what you need for safe and healthy transport : four strokes and a catalyst . S uch motorcycles consume two lit re s of fuel per one hundred kilometres .
The solution that we can see in some of the neighbo u r ing countries in the EU is also worth considering: i n the Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example, for a few years you have been allowed to get on a 125 cc motorbike without any examination if you have a category B driving licen c e and a few years’ driving experience .
It sounds a little dangerous , as these bikes are not simple scooter s . Didn't this rule lead to an increase in the number of accidents?
Nowhere have we seen any negative experience regarding this.
How much was the motorcycle market boosted as a result of th is new regulation?
We saw it for ourselves. W e were just testing in Slovakia with an importer after the introduction of the new rule. He told us that he had bought three containers of 125 cc motorbikes from old stocks in the European market . He asked us to guess how long it took the stock to be cleared . Our guess was two or three weeks , but he revealed that
all were sold out in twenty-four hours via online bookings.
One such step can boost demand, and it can also enhance the sale of stronger vehicles, because whoever buys a 125 cc and takes a liking to motorcycling , will sooner or later start to think that it would be good to pop down to Lake Balaton on two wheels , and in most cases will end up buy ing a larger machine.