This month sees the sorry demise of the Yamaha DT125R, and whilst unlike most models that are quietly dropped from the importers catalogues, this has got nowt to do with limp sales.Quite the opposite in fact, because the venerable little trailie has been Yamaha UK's best-selling eighth-litre bike for longer than I care to remember, and in fact the clear market leader in the Trail/Enduro class for several years.
However the little DT - the only remaining progeny of a line of capable and often inspired 'strokers than stretches back to 1968 has finally fallen victim to that scourge of motorcycling pleasure, European Emission Legislation: it's simply too smokey. And whilst the P.R. department down at Weybridge bravely hint at its replacement with a 4-stroke entry level machine "in the near future", the disappearance of this handy little learner-cum-commuter-cum-trailie must be causing considerable angst up in the boardroom... and if not, why not?
It may well be that they just want to use up stocks of the 2-stroke engined bike which dealers are currently outing at very, ahem, agreeable prices, before Yamaha do an RV125 Van Van (pardon?) on us and simply equip an old model with a new, environmentally friendly 4-stroke. Which'd be a smart move and, since perhaps its main appeal is to the restricted learner market which has to swallow the inevitably sluggish performance. Even so, such a strategy would mean that those of us who'd want to unleash a few more ponies and go trail riding proper would have to cough up rather more than the £300+ it costs to plumb a grey import power-valve into a DT. And whether or not it'd be possible to price the bike within reach of Honda's new Brazilian-built XR125L at £2249 is also a very moot point.
What of course Yamaha have done along with other importers is to focus their learner marketing efforts on 50cc machines, which look and perform like severely strangled versions of their bigger, sexier bikes but offer more profit than a bog-standard runabout. .. or mopeds as we used to call them.
Equally predictable these days is the increasing demographic importance of the older biker - a fact that's been exercising me in more sense than three for some months now. Just recently I was doing a feature for a consumer motor bicycle organ which involved riding great distances at high speed on a brand spanking Z1000 -an exceedingly pleasant experience were it not for the harsh rear suspension, total absence of fairing, and upholstery by Planks-R-Us. Much of my travel, all of it on blessedly sunny days, took me along Welsh highways favoured by serious bikers on serious bikes, and often when I stopped for refreshment or photographic purposes a few curious fellow travellers came to gawk at the big Kawa's angular styling and extreme orange-ness. And when helmets were removed, without exception they were all obviously well over forty.
Which got me thinking that almost all the riders I've come across casually in the past year or two have also been, well how shall I put it, of mature years. And we are not talking sunny Sunday wibblers on ancient British ironware, but owners of big, smart new machinery, in itself a reflection of their buying power as much as their enthusiasms. And although I don't have access to the data, one senior marketing man ruefully let slip that the mean average age of new bike buyers continues to rise inexorably... The baby boomers are now fuelling the biking boom.
Well clearly some blokes in their 20s and 30s can, although the insurance and interest payments might stretch 'em a bit, but that's who the mainstream magazines and the hot-shot marketing boys clearly and almost exclusively aim their creative efforts at.
I've had a run in or two with editors of the major biking mags who essentially reject the dangers of this, claiming that 'core reader values' - whatever in all hell they are? - attract the aspirations of older riders who want to feel that they're part of the same tearaways club they pitch their editorial towards... with the convenient justification that if they were getting it wrong, then their advertisers would run a mile. And for that reason of course they don't want to hire any hacks who, although they may be in the same age bracket as a large chunk of their readership, don't espouse the same corporate bullshit, er sorry, philosophy.
And actually they may have a point, because motorcycling has always been an aspirational game, but so far - with the exceptions of Harley-Davidson and BMW - no manufacturers have dared to buck the trend and blatantly appeal to older, more circumspect and of course affluent riders without pandering to the performance junkie mentality. It would be interesting therefore to see what would happen if some publisher with serious resources, rather than those who can only afford to dabble on the sidelines in pursuit of their own narrow interests, had the bottle to launch a grown-up magazine for grown-up motorcyclists. Or even adjust the balance of their existing titles more in favour of them.
That might actually encourage the advertisers to recognise the true nature of the market they've been enjoying largely by default, and that in turn might find them selling more of the bigger, high ticket machines that arm them with profits. Unlike the dying breed of small, entry-level bikes that are being legislated off the road... like the DT125R.