Best-selling motorcycle brands in the United Kingdom 2015-2023

Honda was the leading motorcycle brand in the United Kingdom in 2023 with over 20,000 units registered by UK consumers. Despite a year-on-year dip in sales of around 19 percent in 2020 from which Honda began to recover in 2021, seeing only a small dip of 6 percent between 2022 and 2023. The brand remained a class of its own: Honda's nearest competitor, fellow Japan based manufacturer Yamaha, sold closed to 12,250 units. In 2020, Lexmoto, Yamaha's closest competitor in 2020, lost its position as the third most popular motorcycle brand in the UK, experiencing a nearly 50 percent drop in 2021 to just under 6,000 units sold. 

Honda’s worldwide sales

Globally, Honda sold 18.76 million motorcycles in their 2023 fiscal year. Of this tally, more than 17 million units were shipped in Asia, by far the company’s most important sales market. Two-wheelers are convenient in countries with small roads and tight city structures, making motorcycles and scooters more ubiquitous than passenger cars in many Asian countries, such as India, where Honda Motorcycles & Scooters (HMSI) accounted for 25 percent of the market in the 2023 financial year, making it the second leading manufacturer in the country.

Motorcycles on UK roads

In 2022, United Kingdom roads were populated by 1.33 million motorcycles. This figure has seen slight fluctuations in the past nineteen years, with a first peak recorded in 2009, at nearly 1.28 million units. The subsequent fall in motorcycle numbers contrasted with the volume of cars in the country, which had continued to grow steadily. 2020, in part due to economic uncertainties linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, saw a slight reversal of this trend.