Canada Motorcycles Market is recovering. Following an harsh start of the year, when trade issues with US negatively impacted the consumers, during the third quarter sales recovered and Year to date September have been 55.589 (-6.4%).
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 (-1.8%).
The start of 2025 was positive in January, 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.
In the first half demand for new motorcycles was weak resulting in a market decline of 9.8%.
During the third quarter sales recovered and Year to date September have been 55.589 (-6.4%).
Sales of electric vehicles are moderately increasing (+5.7%) while remaining absolutely marginal.
Market Leaders and Performance
The market is usually dominated by Honda and Yamaha, which control over 40% of the market.
In 2025 the market leader so far was Yamaha, which kept the fast track of recent years to keep the leadership with a +34.5% in sales.
The previous leader, Honda, is struggling, losing 13.8% and even the third player, Kawasaki, is losing 7.3%.
However, the start of the 2025 was harsh for both and while Honda kept the leadership although losing 9.3% of sales, Yamaha dropped in second place with sales down 20.3%
In third place surprisingly there is Kawasaki with sales down 18.9%.
The fourth player is KTM with sales increased 8.1% and overtaking Harley-Davidson, which lost 9.7%.