On the face of it, the market for motorcycles and scooters continued to decline in terms of unit sales in 2005, maintaining a long-term trend, which has seen registrations slump by more than a fifth since the beginning of the decade. However, these bald statistics disguise the fact that within the overall market, demand for motorcycles has been relatively strong – and even grew in 2005 compared to 2004 – whereas sales of scooters have collapsed, falling by nearly half during the same period. The performance of the market is even more impressive considering that, during the past five years, suppliers have had to deal with the impact of an increasingly onerous burden of EU legislation relating to standards, emissions and driving licences as well as UK-specific threats to particular sectors of the market arising from decisions taken by government departments and legislation passing through Parliament.

This report explores the hypothesis that negative consumer perceptions of motorcycling, allied with an onerous legislative framework, are serving to restrict demand for new motorcycles and scooters. In short, two-wheelers are viewed as the poor relation to cars at all levels. It aims to assess current sales trends and to identify consumer behaviour and perceptions relating to motorcycling with a view to establishing what measures need to be taken by manufacturers and other interested parties to improve the image of motorcycling and, through this, consistently increase sales of new motorcycles and scooters in the UK. Mintel last covered this subject in Motorcycles & Scooters, Market Intelligence, April 2004.