The Case For Cruisers
THE CASE FOR CRUISERS
STYLING EXERCISE OR YOUR NEXT BIKE?
Jon F. Thompson
IT'S TEMPTING TO turn up your nose at cruisers, to dismiss them as more style than substance, as baubles for riders who care more about presence than performance.
Don’t do it. There's something happening here that makes these bikes a surprising force in today's motorcycle marketplace.
Though market research indicates that the cruiser segment suffered a steep sales decline in the past few years, it also shows that most of that decline took place in the under600cc portion of the cruiser market. Driven by the continuing showroom success of Harley-Davidson, which fields six of the top-selling cruisers, sales for larger-displacement cruisers have remained strong.
Why? “I think it’s a backlash against what I call the Three-G Syndrome: Grinding Gonads on Gas tanks,” says Mike Wilkinson, a spokesman for Yamaha. “We’ve found a large group of older riders who prefer cruisers. They talk about comfort and ease of riding.”
Market analyst Don Brown puts it another way: “A lot of riders enjoy riding something not so demanding of their own skills. A cruiser is closer to the way a lot of people like to ride motorcycles.”
Bob Moffit, Kawasaki’s vice president of marketing, agrees. He says, “The sportbike rider sacrifices some comfort for control. You’ve got a group of people opting out of that, looking for a different experience.”
Neither this sentiment, nor HarleyDavidson’s continuing factory-bursting success-Harley owns about 65 percent of the cruiser segment-has been lost on Japanese manufacturers, who fully realize that there is money to be made on something other than sportbikes. In an effort to enhance the appeal of their respective lines, Honda has upgraded its Shadow 1100 by offering a variety of custom
color combinations, Suzuki has bumped the displacement on its Intruder 750 to 800cc, and all four manufacturers have stuck their toes into the standardbike waters.
Add to this the fact that motorcycle owners, as a group, are aging and are, as their mortgages and children mature, enjoying increased amounts of disposable income. What you get is a picture of the future.
Says Brown, “If there’s a trend, it is that the heavyweight cruiser category is where the action is.”
