Canada Motorcycles Market plummet in Q1. After the +5.0% of January, sales dropped 34.3% and 18.4% respectively in February and March, with the first quarter ended with 11.001 sales (-20.2%). Honda kept the leadership while H-D overtakes Yamaha in second.
Economic Outlook
Economic growth in Canada is projected to rise to around 1.7% in 2025 and 2026, outpacing potential output, and excess supply is gradually absorbed. Inflation is expected to remain close to the Bank of Canada’s 2% target.
Canada’s real GDP growth of 1.7% in 2025 (annual average basis), which masks a sizeable deceleration in the quarterly growth profile as the year progresses. On a fourth-quarter over fourth-quarter basis, the Canadian economy is poised to expand by 1.3% in 2025 (compared with our previous forecast of 1.8%) after expanding by 2.6% in 2024.
The lack of visibility over U.S. trade policy is likely to delay investment decisions, with negative implications for GDP and employment in Canada. We previously expected much slower immigration and labor force growth to contribute to a decline in the unemployment rate in the second half of this year, but with hiring now likely to be weaker than we previously assumed, our new forecast is that the unemployment rate will average between 6.6% and 7.0% throughout 2025.
Motorcycles Industry Trend and Perspectives
Canadian motorcycles industry is relatively small and very stable around the 70K sales per year (motorcycles+scooters). However, all top manufacturers are operating in the country and recently Indian and Chinese producers are considering to establish local operations.
In 2024 the market was almost stable ending the year with 67.526 sales (-2.4%).
The start of 2025 was positive in 2025, but immediately after it started to be severely hit by Trump economic policy and declarations, with a Canadian consumers which stand up against product imported from US, which, unfortunately for the industry, includes Harley-Davidson, but many other manufacturers, considering that local production includes only few EVs startups.
After the +5.0% of January, sales dropped 34.3% and 18.4% respectively in February and March, with the first quarter ended with 11.001 sales (-20.2%).
Market Leaders and Performance
The market is usually dominated by Honda and Yamaha, which controlled 38.4% of market share last year.
However, the start of the 2025 was harsh for both and while Honda kept the leadership although losing 22.7% of sales, Yamaha dropped in third place with sales down 35.5%
In second surprisingly there is Harley-Davidson with sales down a mere 4.1%, one of the best performance in this quarter.
The Fourth player is KTM, losing 25.3%, and the fifth is Kawasaki with sales down 31.1%.
