:format(jpeg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/6NWDN36RKJEN5AVBEMH56RDNJA.jpg "Motorcycle sales are down. Will electric bikes help fix that?")
:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/6NWDN36RKJEN5AVBEMH56RDNJA.jpg "Motorcycle sales are down. Will electric bikes help fix that?")
The Suzuki V-Strom 800 will debut at the Toronto Motorcycle Show, which runs from Feb. 17-19, at the Enercare Centre at Exhibition Place.Handout
There’ll be dozens of new motorcycles on display this weekend at the manufacturer-led Toronto Motorcycle Show, and next weekend at the Montreal Motorcycle Show, but will they be a tough sell in Canada?
The market for motorcycles in Canada never quite recovered after the heady days of the early 2000s. Back then, Canadians bought more than 80,000 new motorcycles every year, peaking in 2008 when almost 90,000 new bikes were sold. After the global financial crisis gutted annual sales – falling to 49,000 in 2011 – they slowly recovered to about 60,000, held back mostly by the high cost of insurance. It wasn’t until the pandemic that sales surged by an extra 10 per cent each year. Stuck-at-home riders bought dirt bikes, and then bought street