Make money from bikes
Forget savings; invest in motorcycles
ICURRENTLY HAVE A garage full of what I call ‘future investments,’ which is my justification for keeping on purchasing bikes (there’s ten that the wife knows about). As I am selfemployed, I don’t have a pension to fall back on so my bike collection is my retirement fund and that means I have been extra careful to buy the right ones at the right time. Have I made the right choices? I’ll let you know when I sign up for my bus pass but here is what I’ve learned in 20-odd years of investing.
You can double your money in ten years
Yes – if you do it right the returns are much higher than an ISA and you get to ride and own something lovely. The value of say, original Yamaha R1s and other ‘modern classics’ has more than doubled in the last decade. But you also have to be realistic. The problem with bikes is that they are a niche market, so you can’t expect huge returns. Cars will always go up more in value than bikes simply because there are more potential buyers.
Sell as well as buy
The biggest issue when investing in bikes is the ‘bubble effect.’ Once a bike starts to become popular, its value inflates like a bubble but at some stage, this bubble will reach a critical point and it will either deflate or remain static. The key to investing is getting out when the bubble is at its biggest, which is really hard to judge and if you leave it too late, then you might lose out. At the moment, RD350LCS are going ballistic but the next generation of rider could look at them and think ‘that’s just a smelly old banger’ as they have no nostalgic link to two-strokes — at which point, the bubble bursts.
You need to buy smart
When investing in a bike, you make your money when you buy it, not when you sell it. If you spend a bit more and buy a really good example, it will be worth more when you come to sell it, so your investment return will be greater. I bought an RD350LC for £800 in 2003, that same bike is worth over £4000 nowadays. It isn’t a minter, which is why I’ll probably sell it soon to take advantage of the market demand and then reinvest the money, but it has done well as an investment. My YPVS on the other hand, which I bought for £1000 at roughly the same time, is worth hanging onto as it is a matching-numbers, totally original bike, so holds its value as it is rare.