Just the Facts: July 2020

Welcome back to Chasing the Horizon, a podcast by, for and about motorcyclists and the motorcycle industry! It’s been a little tough rounding up guests, what with the pandemic and summer and all, so I ended up taking July off. Now I’m back with a dose of the news.


If you look at the motorcycle industry as a whole, the 2nd quarter of 2020 was positive. Global sales were up year over year in most markets despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. From everything I’ve seen, that trend is continuing as the northern hemisphere launches into summer, but you know how these things go. There are winners and there are losers.

We’ll kick things off with a winner – BMW Motorrad, who enjoyed record sales for June of just over 20,000 units worldwide. BMW also announced their adaptive cruise control for motorcycles, which is pretty cool.

Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 decked out as a scrambler. Photo courtesy of Motoroids.

Royal Enfield managed a sales coup over in the United Kingdom, watching their Interceptor 650 beat the BMW R 1250 GS in monthly sales. It didn’t help them improve sales globally for the month, but hey, any win is a win. The Indian motorbike manufacturer is celebrating its FT 411 and FT 650 race bikes with Slide School sessions across the United States. We’ll be watching RE get sideways in American Flat Track, it seems!

Harley posted a loss of $92 million for Q2-2020 compared to Q2-2019, their first quarterly loss in over 10 years. They also delisted from the S&P 500 and announced they’re cutting 700 jobs by the end of 2020, a move new CEO Jochen Zeitz says has “hurt morale.” (Gee, ya think?) Apparently it’s all part of The Hardwire, Zeitz’s five-year plan to save The Motor Company.

Jason Momoa. Photo courtesy of TMZ.

At least they’ve got actor/model Jason Momoa to serve as their marketing lead for the Pan America when it comes out in Q1-2021.

To celebrate his 50th birthday, Diego Cardenas rode his LiveWire along the West Coast Green Highway from the US border with Mexico to the US border with Canada, spanning the 1,400 miles in nine days.

KYMCO RevoNex concept bike, shown here at EICMA 2019.

We might see KYMCO’s first production electric motorcycle, the RevoNEX, in dealerships late next year. Time will tell if they beat Indian – who just trademarked the name EFTR for electric motorcycles – to the punch.

Thanks for listening, thanks for reading, thanks for just being you. We’ll be back soon with more discussion episodes, so we’ll see you somewhere on the road – or off it! Ride safe.