Britain Has More Motorcycles Than Ever – So Where Are All the New Motorcyclists?

There are more than 1.3 million motorcycles licensed for use on British roads, suggesting that motorcycling remains in remarkably good health. Look beyond the headline number, however, and there are signs of a much more complicated problem developing. The motorcycles are still here, but the people buying them are getting older, the machines themselves are staying on the road for longer and a growing proportion of small-capacity motorcycle use appears to have little to do with recreational motorcycling at all. The question isn't whether motorcycling is dying, but whether we're creating enough new motorcyclists to sustain it.

I've worked in and around motorcycle dealerships for a significant proportion of my adult life, and one of the advantages of spending years behind the counter is that you begin to notice changes that aren't necessarily obvious from registration statistics. Individual customers tell you very little about an industry, but after thousands of conversations, finance applications, part-exchanges and new-bike handovers, patterns inevitably begin to emerge.

One of those patterns has increasingly bothered me.

When I managed a Hein Gericke branch in 2008, motorcycling seemed to attract a much broader spread of ages than I typically encounter today. Sports bikes were everywhere and plenty of the people riding them were in their twenties and thirties. GSX-R600s, Yamaha R6s, Kawasaki ZX-6Rs and Honda CBR600RRs weren't exotic machines owned exclusively by wealthy collectors; they were the aspirational motorcycles of a generation of relatively young riders. Attend a trackday and you would find much the same demographic.

Nearly twenty years later, I run a motorcycle dealership and the picture feels noticeably different. We still sell plenty of motorcycles and enthusiasm for them certainly hasn't disappeared, but the customers purchasing larger new bikes are overwhelmingly established riders. If I took 100 customers buying new motorcycles over 500cc through our dealership today, I would estimate that around three quarters would be over 40.

That is only the experience of one dealership and shouldn't be mistaken for a national statistic, but it raises an important question when placed alongside the wider industry data: are we actually creating enough new motorcyclists, or have we become exceptionally good at selling new motorcycles to people who already ride?

On paper, everything looks fine

At first glance there appears to be little cause for concern. Department for Transport figures show that Britain had approximately 1.36 million licensed motorcycles at the end of 2025, compared with roughly 1.25 million a decade earlier. The motorcycle population has therefore grown rather than contracted.

If the number of motorcycles on the road is our measure of the health of motorcycling, the conclusion seems obvious: motorcycling isn't dying at all.

The problem is that motorcycles and motorcyclists aren't interchangeable units.

One enthusiast can own several motorcycles, and every one of them appears in the vehicle parc. A rider keeping a 15-year-old Fireblade alongside a newer adventure bike and perhaps a classic in the garage contributes three motorcycles to the national total while representing only one customer. Equally, keeping an older motorcycle licensed for another year maintains the size of the parc without generating a single new-bike sale or creating a new rider.

There is evidence that this is increasingly important. The average licensed motorcycle in Britain is now around 16 years old, compared with 13.7 years in 2015. The fleet hasn't simply grown; it has aged considerably.

That suggests British riders are keeping motorcycles for longer, which in itself isn't necessarily a problem. Modern motorcycles are generally reliable, corrosion aside many age extremely well, and there is no particular reason why a perfectly good ten-year-old motorcycle needs replacing. For an industry dependent on selling new motorcycles, however, an ageing vehicle parc tells a rather different story from a rapidly expanding population of newly purchased machines.

There is also another significant change hiding within that 1.36 million figure.

The motorcycle delivering your dinner

Anyone living in or around a major British town or city will have witnessed the extraordinary growth of app-based food and parcel delivery. Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat and the wider expectation of near-instant home delivery have created an economy that barely existed in its present form a decade ago, and small motorcycles and scooters have become one of its essential tools.

This matters because a commercially operated Honda PCX125 and a privately owned Honda Fireblade both ultimately contribute to statistics describing Britain's powered two-wheeler population, yet they tell us completely different things about the health of recreational motorcycling.

The distinction is particularly obvious from inside a dealership. Based purely on what we see across our own counter, I would estimate that around two thirds of the PCX125s, Vision 110s and SH Modes we encounter are associated with commercial delivery or courier work. Interestingly, the more expensive Forza 125 tends to attract a much more conventional private customer, illustrating why it would be equally misleading simply to classify every 125cc scooter as a commercial vehicle.

The intensity with which some delivery machines are used is remarkable. We have encountered PCXs covering around 6,000 miles in a month, equivalent to 72,000 miles a year if that usage continued. Many privately owned recreational motorcycles won't cover that distance in their entire lives.

I've also encountered several prospective customers who have openly stated that they wanted to finance small-capacity motorcycles with the intention of renting them to delivery riders who were unable to obtain finance themselves. I have no way of knowing how those arrangements subsequently operate, whether they proceed at all, or how they interact with finance agreements and hire-and-reward insurance requirements, but their existence demonstrates how far parts of the small-capacity market have moved away from traditional private motorcycle ownership.

None of this means that delivery riders account for the growth in Britain's motorcycle population, nor would the available data justify making that claim. What it does mean is that the total number of licensed motorcycles is an increasingly imperfect way of measuring the health of recreational motorcycling.

Government data provides another indication of the distinction. Around 180,000 CBT certificates per year have been issued on average during the latest three-year period considered by the Government, while the corresponding annual average number of motorcycle test passes was only 40,678. Between March 2023 and March 2025, around 77,000 people repeated their CBT, representing 23% of the certificates issued during that period.

The Government is sufficiently concerned about this phenomenon that its current review of motorcycle training and licensing explicitly discusses riders who repeatedly renew CBTs rather than progressing towards a full licence. This isn't an entirely new phenomenon – concerns about riders remaining indefinitely on CBTs existed long before Deliveroo became part of the British high street – but the growth of delivery work has created an obvious economic reason for some riders to use a small motorcycle without ever becoming part of the traditional progression from learner to full-licence recreational motorcyclist.

In other words, motorcycle activity and growth in the motorcycle enthusiast population are not necessarily the same thing.

Who is actually buying the big bikes?

At the other end of the market, the picture becomes almost the reverse. Rather than riders using motorcycles primarily as tools of employment, the customers purchasing larger new motorcycles increasingly appear to be people for whom the bike is an entirely discretionary purchase.

Our Fireblade customers provide an entertaining example. The stereotypical modern Fireblade buyer, at least in my experience, isn't the 23-year-old who once had one pinned to his bedroom wall. He is more likely to be an established tradesman arriving at the dealership in a relatively new van, with enough disposable income to indulge himself and, more often than not, an R1, S1000RR or another serious motorcycle already sitting in the garage.

Move into bikes such as the NT1100, Africa Twin, CB1000GT, CB1000F and similar larger machines and the age profile becomes even more obvious. These customers are almost universally over 40 in our dealership. Many arrive with a substantial part-exchange and simply pay the difference outright, while finance penetration on recreational motorcycles is surprisingly low.

There is a logical reason for this. Many of these customers have reached a stage in life where the major financial obstacles are already behind them. Their children may have grown up, their career is established, the house was bought years ago and the family car is already on the driveway. Their current motorcycle may itself be worth several thousand pounds, giving them substantial equity to roll into the next one.

For these customers, changing a motorcycle can be relatively painless. Someone trading an £8,000 bike against a £13,000 replacement only needs to find the £5,000 difference. They already own the helmet, jacket, boots, gloves and security equipment, have decades of riding experience and may benefit from years of insurance no-claims history.

Compare that with somebody entering motorcycling at 23 and the showroom price may be identical, but the actual financial proposition bears almost no resemblance.

The enormous cost of starting from zero

A young new rider doesn't arrive with an £8,000 motorcycle to trade. They have to fund the entire purchase, while simultaneously paying for training, testing, protective clothing, security and insurance. In many cases they also need a car because the realities of British weather, employment and family life make relying solely on a motorcycle impractical.

Insurance alone creates a remarkable disparity. Current GoCompare quote data puts the median motorcycle insurance premium for riders aged 16–24 at approximately £970, compared with £367 for those aged 25–49 and just £130 for riders aged 50 and above.

It means that before fuel, servicing or depreciation are considered, the youngest riders can face a median insurance cost more than seven times that of the generation the motorcycle industry already serves most successfully.

Then there is licensing. Again, this isn't an argument against proper training. Motorcycles are inherently less forgiving than cars and there is an entirely legitimate public interest in ensuring riders are competent before giving them access to increasingly powerful machines. Nevertheless, the industry should acknowledge the journey we ask a prospective young motorcyclist to undertake.

There is CBT, a motorcycle theory test, Module 1 and Module 2, with access to different categories governed by age and experience. A1 is available from 17, A2 from 19, while unrestricted Category A requires either direct access at 24 or progression through the licensing structure. Depending on the route taken, a rider may face further training and testing as they progress.

Indeed, the Government is currently consulting on reforms to the system, including the possibility of allowing some riders to progress through licence categories via training rather than repeatedly taking practical tests. The fact that reform is being considered at all suggests there is recognition that the present structure may create unnecessary barriers to progression.

Each individual cost can be justified. Training matters. Insurance reflects risk. Protective clothing is sensible. Security is increasingly essential.

The problem is what happens when they are all added together.

A motorcycle has traditionally been presented as relatively inexpensive personal transport, yet for a young person who already needs a car, recreational motorcycling increasingly requires enough disposable income to support a second vehicle and an entirely separate ecosystem of costs around it.

That fundamentally changes who can participate.

Perhaps young people haven't stopped liking motorcycles

One of the easiest explanations for the ageing motorcycle customer is simply to say that younger generations aren't interested. Cars and motorcycles have supposedly been replaced by smartphones, gaming, social media and different attitudes towards vehicle ownership.

There may be an element of truth in changing interests, but what I see in the dealership makes me reluctant to accept it as the primary explanation.

The under-30 customers who successfully buy new motorcycles from us tend to share several characteristics. They are usually established in reasonably secure employment, already own a car, have obtained their motorcycle licence and have reached a level of financial stability where the bike can exist as a luxury rather than essential transport.

The younger customers who want a motorcycle but don't ultimately buy one often present a different picture. They are much more likely to need finance because they don't have several thousand pounds of disposable cash or a valuable motorcycle to trade in. Existing borrowing, affordability assessments or their credit profile can then prevent the purchase.

The desire to own a motorcycle was clearly present – they wouldn't have been standing in the dealership applying for finance otherwise. What they lacked was the financial capacity to turn that desire into ownership.

That distinction matters, because lack of participation is not necessarily the same thing as lack of interest.

What happened to the 600?

There has also been a striking change in the motorcycles younger riders aspire to own.

The younger customers buying from us today commonly gravitate towards motorcycles such as the Honda CBR650R and CB650R, Yamaha MT-07, Kawasaki Z650 and Triumph Street Triple. They are excellent motorcycles and, in many respects, better suited to everyday road riding than the machines that preceded them.

But the cultural position they occupy is different.

Twenty years ago the young rider moving into a serious motorcycle had a showroom full of 600cc supersports to choose from. Honda had the CBR600RR, Yamaha the R6, Kawasaki the ZX-6R and Suzuki the GSX-R600. These weren't obscure halo products; they formed one of the most important and visible categories in motorcycling.

They were raced. They filled trackdays. They appeared in magazines. Young riders modified them, crashed them, repaired them and argued endlessly about which one was fastest.

More importantly, they gave riders something attainable to aspire towards.

The collapse of that market has numerous causes, including emissions regulations, insurance costs, changing consumer tastes and the economics of producing increasingly sophisticated motorcycles for a shrinking category. It would be simplistic to blame any single factor.

Nevertheless, its disappearance feels significant because an industry needs more than affordable products. It needs aspirational products that feel relevant to the next generation.

Today manufacturers have become extraordinarily good at producing sophisticated adventure bikes, premium retros, sports tourers and superbikes equipped with technology that would have been unimaginable twenty years ago. Electronic suspension, radar-assisted cruise control, heated equipment, large TFT displays, multiple riding modes and sophisticated rider aids have made modern motorcycles astonishingly capable.

They have also made many of them astonishingly expensive.

That is perfectly rational when the customer buying them is in his fifties, has substantial disposable income and already owns a motorcycle worth thousands of pounds. Manufacturers aren't charities; they build products for the people actually spending money.

The danger is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle. An ageing customer base has more disposable income, so manufacturers develop increasingly sophisticated and expensive motorcycles for it. Those motorcycles become harder for younger customers to access, so the average buyer becomes older still. The industry's commercial focus then moves further towards the customer who continues to buy.

In the short term it makes excellent business sense. Over several decades, it becomes considerably more worrying.

We've already lost some of the riders we created

There is another part of this discussion that is easily overlooked. The industry doesn't only need to attract new riders; it also needs to retain the ones it already has.

When I was running Hein Gericke in 2008, motorcycles were part of the social lives of a large proportion of my friends. Today, I would estimate that perhaps half of those people no longer ride, predominantly because they can no longer justify the expense.

Life happened. Mortgages, children, cars, energy bills, food and all the other financial demands of adulthood gradually took priority. For many of them the motorcycle was discretionary expenditure and, eventually, it was the thing that had to go.

This is anecdotal rather than statistical evidence, but it raises an important point when considering why the customer base appears to be ageing. The industry needs enough young riders entering at one end not only to replace those who eventually become too old to ride, but also those who leave motorcycling along the way.

If fewer people enter, while some existing riders drop out and those who remain keep their motorcycles for longer, the total number of licensed bikes can continue looking surprisingly healthy for a considerable period.

It becomes a lagging indicator.

Motorcycling may have a wealth problem

Perhaps, then, we've been asking the wrong question.

Rather than asking why young people don't like motorcycles, perhaps we should ask at what point in modern British life does recreational motorcycling become comfortably affordable?

Increasingly, the answer appears to be somewhere around middle age.

By then earnings are generally higher, careers are established and many of the enormous one-off costs associated with early adulthood have already been absorbed. Insurance becomes dramatically cheaper. There may be equity in an existing motorcycle and a collection of riding kit accumulated over many years.

It isn't difficult to understand why that person can walk into a dealership and spend £15,000 on something that exists almost entirely for enjoyment.

For somebody 25 years younger, the economics are entirely different.

That makes the motorcycle industry's current customer base perfectly understandable. What concerns me is what happens when today's customer reaches the point where they finally stop buying.

A 57-year-old buying an Africa Twin today may still be buying motorcycles at 67 and perhaps even 77. Modern riders remain active far later in life than previous generations and manufacturers have become exceptionally good at building motorcycles that suit them.

Eventually, though, somebody needs to be standing behind them.

That is the part I'm no longer convinced we're adequately addressing.

More motorcycles doesn't necessarily mean more motorcyclists

None of this suggests that motorcycling is about to disappear. Britain's 1.36 million licensed motorcycles are real, manufacturers continue to produce extraordinary machines and there remains an enormous amount of enthusiasm for them.

What the headline number cannot tell us is who those motorcycles represent.

It cannot distinguish one enthusiast owning four bikes from four new riders owning one each. It cannot tell us whether a PCX spends Sunday afternoon exploring B-roads or Monday night delivering someone's chicken tikka masala. It cannot tell us whether an ageing Fireblade has changed hands three times without creating a single new motorcyclist.

When the average motorcycle itself is getting older, significant numbers of riders repeatedly renew CBTs without progressing to full licences, commercial small-capacity motorcycle use has become increasingly visible and dealerships such as mine see a large-bike customer base dominated by riders over 40, it seems reasonable to question whether the headline motorcycle population is concealing stagnation underneath.

The industry has become exceptionally good at persuading existing motorcyclists to buy another motorcycle. The quality and capability of the products available today prove that beyond question.

Its longer-term challenge may be considerably more difficult: making sure enough people can afford to become motorcyclists in the first place.

Because the greatest threat to motorcycling may not be that the next generation doesn't want motorcycles.

It may simply be that by the time they can comfortably afford them, they're already the next generation of middle-aged riders.