Into the New Decade
ABOUT THE TIME THIS ARTICLE HITS THE PRESS, we’ll be entering the main 2020 buying season for many markets in the northern hemisphere. In fact, when I lived in Bavaria, there was just one month, April, when the bike market came alive. From November each year, there was a good chance you’d be under a blanket of snow, so insurance companies offered motorcyclists a unique deal. You could pay for insurance for just six months, but be awarded the no-claims bonus for an entire year.
That was the up-side of being a Bavarian motorcyclist. The down-side was having precisely one month to sell your old bike in any given year: April. Classics were another matter. I did sell a 1938 Victoria and a 1959 Moto Guzzi Falcone Sport in other months, but unless you were prepared to take a painful loss, plain second-hand stuff that didn’t sell by May stayed in the garage until the following year. In theory, dealer trade-ins were available year-round, if one accepted the unfavourable values offered against
