So who's buying all the Harleys and Ducatis?

[scumdog]

Got my Hugley Tractorson ex Japan for about $2,000+ less than one in NZ AND it only had 7,000km.

The Jap import was meant to be less 'grunty' than the regular bikes - but from what I can glean it's all in the zorst restriction - and I fixed that..

[Krayy]

... I REFUSE to go on a waiting list for a bloody motorcycle!

Yeah, Finn just buys the dealership so he can get to the front of the line

[Forest]

If it's a modern motorcycle that floats your boat, in twelve months or (gasp) twenty-four months time it's just going to be last years, or worse, a really old model.

Leaving the owner discontented, feeling poorly, and needing to off-load that outdated piece of shizznit so he can buy the "latest and greatest next best thing". As advertised in the latest Motorcycle Magazine.

So he can then front up and be seen to be "with it". For maybe 12 or 24 months or so on his new bike, then the cycle repeats itself. Mind you, his new bike has 2.75 extra HP or whatever they call them today and can do 264.91 KPH instead of 261.25 kph so the extra $12,421 he spent on it to supercede his 2007 model was well worth the cash. Not.

It's called planned obsolescence and is a concept well known to manufacturers since the days of the model T Ford.

Do you need to, and can you afford to buy into it? Is it possible to be happy to ride what you currently own?

But thanks to those people, a stream of used late model bikes is flowing into the secondary market.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the rest of us.

[danchop]

the answer lies in the nz dollar