Ducatisti: do you want the good news or the bad news first? The bad news is that the market for motorcycles 500cc and up is down 17% worldwide for the first quarter of this year, which means the “good” news is that Ducati is only down 5% for Q1 2013.
Not exactly the start out of the gate that Audi was hoping for its newly acquired two-wheeled brand, but what are you going to do? Western Europe is a mess, with Spain and Italy continuing to go down like a…well, you know.
Even the American market is on a slight decline for the first quarter, after showing signs of hitting rock bottom earlier last year. Accordingly Ducati sold 1,605 units in the USA — it’s the largest market by volume.
So why are we a bit giddy here at Asphalt & Rubber? Well while we don’t enjoy the misery of motorcycle brands, the fact that Ducati Motor Holding is now under the Audi AG umbrella means that we get far more detailed quarterly and yearly reports from the two-wheeled marque.
Want to know which Ducati model is out-selling them all? How about how many of each model were produced versus how many were sold? We’ve got the digits after the jump.
| Bikes | Q1 2013 Production | Q1 2013 Delivered | Diff. | % Diff. |
| Diavel | 1827 | 1309 | 518 | 28% |
| Hypermotard | 1597 | 567 | 1030 | 64% |
| Monster | 3874 | 3042 | 832 | 21% |
| Multistrada | 2590 | 1890 | 700 | 27% |
| Streetfighter | 1011 | 906 | 105 | 10% |
| Superbike | 1921 | 2088 | -167 | -9% |
| “Others” | 0 | 15 | -15 | |
| Total | 12820 | 9817 | 3003 |
For Q1 2013, Ducati built 12,820 units, and sold 9,817 of them. Compared to the 10,360 units that were sold in Q1 2012, this puts Ducati down 5.2% for the first-quarter of 2013, and holding roughly 3,000 units in inventory for the big sales push for the spring (assuming the company has no back-orders or inventory already, which is anyone’s guess).
Looking at the model breakouts, it is clear that the Ducati Monster is the brand’s bread and butter, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed Ducati, as the Monster has always been a strong seller with its “affordable” pricing.
More interesting is the Ducati Hypermotard sales, or lack there of. Clearly hitting a slump ahead of the 2013 Ducati Hypermotard’s dealership debut, only 500 or so motorcyclists picked up a 2012 model worldwide. We imagine the massive sales vs. production gap is related to sales figures being for the 2012 model, while the production figures are for the new 2013 liquid-cooled model (mega-gallery here).
Sales in the Superbike range appears to be steady with what we’ve heard from our sources, and it is interesting to note the volume being sold in the Multistrada and Diavel model lines.
Ducati really has become a brand defined on the sales floor by four models, and it will be interesting to see if the company can whip the Hypermotard and Streetfighter lines into shape, though when lumped together (as we imagine Ducati views them) the two liquid-cooled street-nakeds build Ducati’s fifth pillar of sales quite nicely.
No word on profits and losses for Ducati Motor Holding, though it might take zie Germans a bit of time to go through all that Italian bookkeeping.
Source: Audi AG
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