‘Investment returns take time… and nerve’

I’ve warned of the perils of investing in motorcycles before. If something is advertised as an ‘investment’, it rarely is. Now my spotlight is on the Kawasaki Ninja H2. I bought one of the very first batch, back in April 2015, partly because I desperately wanted one and partly because (as I said at the time), I had a suspicion it would be worth a decent sum in years to come.

If you buy almost any new bike, you can expect it to dip in value the moment it’s registered. It won’t start to appreciate in real terms for some years: a decade is a reasonable guess; 20 years more like it. I’ve just seen a zero-mile (but registered) 2015 H2 offered by Village Motorcycles of Stowmarket for £19,995. So far, no takers. Mine cost me £22,713.03 on the road, because I added the special crash bungs (£180 a pair!) and a £332 Biketrac tracker (the insurer insisted). But even without these, whoever bought this has lost money. I expected Kawasaki to sanitise subsequent models, and the SX tourer is a good example of that. I must admit I didn’t expect them to wring another 30-odd bhp out of the original, which they’ve just done, defying the convention that the Mark One is always the most powerful model.

I still think that, in time, a Mark One H2 will be valuable, but meanwhile someone has dropped several thousand quid just to look at a shiny green ornament for three years. Don’t be that guy.

Is it worth buying from Village at that price? Yes, absolutely.