How many Niken owners

[maximNikenGT]

Was initially curious as to how many Niken owners there are in the US.  Tried to look up Niken sales in the US and only thing I could find was 2019 Yamaha global motorcycle sales totals. So my starting point is somewhere under 5 million possible Niken owners.  

• Yamaha Motor: worldwide motorcycle sales 2019 | Statista

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I then tried to see if there were any sales by bike. Closest thing I found was that the Yamaha Niken was a top 10 selling motorcycle in 2018, but is suspect because it didn't include any sales figures. 

Ranking The 10 Best Motorcycles Of 2018 (And The 10 Worst)

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Here are the 10 best-selling motorcycles of 2018, and ten that...

 

 

[texscottyd]

1 hour ago, maximNikenGT said:

Closest thing I found was that the Yamaha Niken was a top 10 selling motorcycle in 2018

Uh... wow.   No offense, but I have to question that one just a bit. 

That is a painful article to read.   I literally know where there are 50+ Honda Groms within 10 miles of my house, yet I've NEVER seen a Niken in the wild.  It makes one suspicious of the numbers...   

[betoney]

7 minutes ago, texscottyd said:

Uh... wow.   No offense, but I have to question that one just a bit. 

That is a painful article to read.   I literally know where there are 50+ Honda Groms within 10 miles of my house, yet I've NEVER seen a Niken in the wild.  It makes one suspicious of the numbers...   

Yes, the article comes across as personal opinion and is riddled with mis-information.  🤷‍♀️

[texscottyd]

5 hours ago, betoney said:

riddled with mis-information

I honestly didn’t know where to even start with the ‘are you serious?’ questions.   Did you catch the photo that goes with the CBR1000RR?  

[betoney]

7 minutes ago, texscottyd said:

I honestly didn’t know where to even start with the ‘are you serious?’ questions.   Did you catch the photo that goes with the CBR100RR?  

Yep, my reaction exactly. 😄

[betoney]

1 hour ago, texscottyd said:

Uh... wow.   No offense, but I have to question that one just a bit. 

That is a painful article to read.   I literally know where there are 50+ Honda Groms within 10 miles of my house, yet I've NEVER seen a Niken in the wild.  It makes one suspicious of the numbers...   

To add some positive Niken info...

  TURBO!! 👍  And some pretty sexy front suspension parts.  The black and tan looks awesome as well.

 

[texscottyd]

@maximNikenGT - Sorry to derail your thread!   I am also very interested in what kind of production numbers are available for the Niken & Niken GT.   I have to think it’s a low volume, and would love to hear if you find anything credible. 

[maximNikenGT]

No worries - hard to believe any article that doesn't actually supply some sales figures or sources. So I decided to dig a little deeper...if I could just find a figure that breaks out Yamaha with two wheels vs. three wheels, I'd be golden. 

Looking elsewhere for some kind of info to give me a ballpark of how many motorcycles are in the US,  given there are roughly close to 328 million people in the US (Source: Google), and according to this source that states the Number of licensed drivers in the USA, there were approximately 227,752,000 licensed drivers in the US in 2019 (approximately 69% of the total population are licensed to drive a motor vehicle). 

Using this as a starting point, I then found the Federal Highway Administration website that actually had motorcycle registrations by state in 2019. I took the data from the following link to Federal Highway Administration of state registrations for motorcycles in 2019 (as of November 2020) and dropped it into Excel. According to this source, there were approximately 8,596,314 motorcycle registrations in the US in 2019. So assuming one motorcycle registration per licensed driver, this comes out to approximately 3.77% of all licensed drivers have a motorcycle. 

I then dropped in the state level data into Excel just to see where the most motorcycles in the US were based upon registrations. I was hoping to find some Yamaha specific info or even two wheeled vs. three wheeled registrations, but this turned out to be a dead end.

As an unrelated side note, my initial guess was the most populous states (CA, TX, NY, FL) should have the most motorcycle registrations, But I was a little surprised by the resulting density map (where darker shades indicate higher counts of motorcycle registrations in 2019). Ohio and Montana surprised me a bit as did Wisconsin in that I didn't expect those in the top 10. Ohio I could somewhat explain with the Honda of Marysville plant producing motorcycles, and that Ohio has a pretty strong dirt bike culture (I'm a former Ohioan). 

I then got the idea to see what Yamaha motorcycle market share was in the US. Tried the 2019 Yamaha fact book. Only thing they had was dollar share (in Japanese Yen) of motorcycle sales by geographic region. 

I then found this link: Market share of major motorcycle brands in the U.S. as of March 2020, based on unit sales.  Yamaha had ~12.2% market share in the US in 2020. So assuming that it was roughly the  same in 2019 at 12.2%, that gives me a ballpark of 12.2% x 8,596,314 mc registrations = ~1,048,750 Yamaha registrations. 

So I know there are quite a few holes in my assumptions, but for discussion purposes, there are probably close to 1 million Yamaha registrations in the US. 

Am open to suggestions or additional sources to help refine this hypothesis please. 

 

[chitown]

Yamaha has never published US sales broken down to model level.

Ohio is a good place to be from. Go Bucks!

 

[jetpilot5]

The closest thing I've read so far to address the question was on a Facebook Niken page. There they were asking owners to post their serial number to try and determine how many had been produced. If I recall the highest serial number was in the upper 1400s so it was assumed that about 1,500 Nikens had been built at the time. Of course, not everyone is on Facebook (me included, I surfed using my wife's account), and not everyone who owns one is going to post. Plus this is worldwide and not broken out by country so does not address US registrations.

I'm serial number 371. Don't know if US bikes started at 0 though.

[maximNikenGT]

3 hours ago, jetpilot5 said:

The closest thing I've read so far to address the question was on a Facebook Niken page. There they were asking owners to post their serial number to try and determine how many had been produced. If I recall the highest serial number was in the upper 1400s so it was assumed that about 1,500 Nikens had been built at the time. Of course, not everyone is on Facebook (me included, I surfed using my wife's account), and not everyone who owns one is going to post. Plus this is worldwide and not broken out by country so does not address US registrations.

I'm serial number 371. Don't know if US bikes started at 0 though.

Interesting, I've got a 2019 Niken GT and assuming by serial number you mean the last six numbers of the VIN that puts me at #000134. Found the following link that explains the importance of the last six numbers of your VIN And what they are used for. 

Don't know if that means 134 Nikens or 134 Niken GTs...

So if there are assumed 1500 Nikens in production worldwide, and 12.2% of them went to the US (2019 Yamaha market share in the US), that implies 183 Nikens in the entire US (roughly 3-4 per US state). Now I'll be the first to admit that this math is highly suspect based upon the very broad assumptions made. 

As a point of reference, there are only 106 McLaren F1s ever produced worldwide. Given how rare it is to see a McLaren F1, seeing a Niken in the wild anecdotally seems like it's about in the right ballpark. 

[pilninggas]

In the UK Yamaha have registered about 100 Nikens and 100 GTs.

I doubt they've broke even given the marketing costs etc.

[maximNikenGT]

5 minutes ago, pilninggas said:

In the UK Yamaha have registered about 100 Nikens and 100 GTs.

I doubt they've broke even given the marketing costs etc.

Personally I was kinda trying to gauge once pandemic is over, whether a Niken owners meet up would be possible of some kind. Given that there may only be 3-4 Niken owners per US state implies that  it'll be a very small rally.

Prior to the pandemic have there been any Niken owner rallies in the UK?

If any Niken owners are near Charlotte, North Carolina, feel free to hit me up.  

[Heli ATP]

I wonder if you could look at the Vin number range. Last six numbers of the Vin go from 000001 to ?

Edit... Ooops just seen this was discussed earlier.

[maximNikenGT]

According to this article there are 1315 Ferrari F40s in the world.

So the likelihood of seeing a Niken in the wild is a little more than seeing a Ferrari F40 on the street assuming production of ~1500 Nikens. 

If the production numbers are that low on the Niken, it's only a matter of time before one makes it's way into Jay Leno's garage as a future collectible.