Peon Maface Posted May 8, 2020 Share Posted May 8, 2020 Yes! I mean No! The correct answer is maybe. It all depends on if you care about money at all, the love of which is the root of all evil. If youâre not worried about your income stream or getting the absolute best deal on a new bike, now is as good a time to buy as any and better than most since itâs springtime, and all the pretty new horses are out! The conventional wisdom this spring seems to be that with the global pandemic going on, manufacturers and dealers are hurting for business and will bow and scrape for your low-ball offer. Maybe they will. It all depends. Youâve got your ideas about what the future will look like and so does your dealer. Just like investing in the stock market (investing in anything, really), itâs all about walking that fine line between fear and greed. If you believe the government is doing the right thing by âopening up the economy,â that the pandemic will soon be in remission and all will soon be right with the world again (or if you believe the whole thing was way overblown to begin with), then you probably want to beat the rush, get in there now and get a new bike before theyâre all sold out â especially if you can find a dealer who believes the opposite, that the downturn will continue and wants to move inventory now. A positive outlook for the future would include the idea that, once the crisis has passed, many people will have learned how cool it is to work from home, that theyâll barely need a car or to put gas in the one they already have, that theyâll fly off less to distant holidays â and all that increased cash flow and freedom should totally stimulate sales of all kinds of feel-good items including new motorcycles. No more globe-trotting for us for a while⌠sad. Aâcourse if you had a new bike you could ride to Todos Santos and sleep under a palapa. For their part, bike manufacturers and dealers are doing their best to make the transaction as painless and socially-distant as possible. Many OEMs, including Kawasaki, Indian and Yamaha to name just three, have rolled out programs like Indianâs Click.Deliver.Ride. deal, which lets you haggle, purchase, and accessorize completely online, then have your new bike dropped at your doorstep. Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury is printing greenbacks at record pace in an attempt to forestall economic collapse. Interest rates were already at historic lows following rate cuts last year to keep the economy juiced; now theyâre even lower (yours truly just refinanced his mortgage down to 2.75%!). Other conventional wisdom used to hold that paying cash for things like motorcycles was always the best way to go: Now that borrowing money is almost free, it definitely pays to have a look at manufacturersâ financing offers (or possibly your bank or better yet, credit union). The fiscally astute use OPM (other peoplesâ money) whenever it pencils out. Every manufacturer seems to be offering deals right now; then again, when arenât they? Now more than usual. Since Iâm bumping around on Indianâs website, I see theyâre offering âno payments till Novemberâ on what looks like all their models. Thatâs quite the test ride. Youâll need a down payment, or a trade, but after that youâre looking at just 1.99% over five years. Indian makes it nicely transparent right on their site: âExample: $13,499 financed at 1.99% APR over 60 months = 60 monthly payments of $212.89; financed amount of $12,149 with $1,350 down payment, total cost of borrowing of $624.50 and a total obligation of $12,773.60.â Paying $624 to borrow $13.5K for five years is, historically, ridiculously cheap. Park the theoretical $12K you didnât spend in an index fund for five years, and if you get an 8% annual return (it was easily doable there for a while), youâll have $17,632 according to the gubâmints calculator. You just made $5000 by using Indian financing. For lots of younger riders, the problem with dealer financing is going to be the requirement to have comprehensive insurance, but if you can swing that, it seems like nearly all the manufacturers are offering deals so sweet, even expensive insurance might be worth it. Oh yeah, youâre probably going to need top-notch credit to get the 1.99% rate. But it never hurts to apply, and it lets the dealer know youâre serious. Also, theyâve been selling cars with 0% financing for years. I wouldnât be surprised to see that extend to motorcycles if it already hasnât. I didnât check every manufacturerâs site. Ryan Burns, who sees the glass as refillable at the Fogarty Replicaâs Pebble Beach coming-out party, might be able to swing the payments, but probably not the insurance. Think of 1.9% financing as practically an open bar. Triumph makes nice motorcycles too. Hereâs its online deal: For the month of May, Triumph is offering customers their choice of outstanding incentive options on the purchase of new Triumph motorcycles â up to $1,200 in Triumph Cash available on select models OR special financing available as low as 1.99% APR. Other options include super low monthly payments with Triumph Triple Financing (including ability to combine with Triumph Cash incentive on MY19 & prior Street Twin and Street Triple models) OR special NO money down / NO interest / NO payments until October 1. Finally, as an additional offer for adventure-minded enthusiasts, every new model- year 2019 and prior Tiger 1200/Explorer purchase receives a FREE pannier set. Itâs the perfect way to kick off your own summer of adventure on a brand new Triumph motorcycle! Offers valid through May 31. But the best reason to finance instead of buying with YOM (your own money) is that if the best-case scenario V-shaped recovery the government is currently predicting turns out to be less rosy, and you do wind up losing your income stream, you can always, ahh, just give the bike back. Your credit will be dinged for a while, but the bank will get over it. They really do depend on all of us to do our duty and buy more stuff. And in this corner⌠Our Facebook friend James Torongo, who actually sounds like he knows what heâs typing about (possibly because heâs a retired VP of Finance who spent 45 years in commercial manufacturing credit and cash management and a four-time âEconomic Forecaster of the Yearâ award winner), speaks of demand shock â a significantly lower and sustained lack of demand. No matter what the supply-side economists currently in power believe, a lack of demand is big trouble. James writes: âWhen 70% of GNP is made up of consumer spending, you have the makings of an economic depression whenever demand tanks. Think of the debt-heavy companies now in trouble; many will fail and their workers will be unemployed with ever-shrinking employment opportunities, thus a self-feeding drop in demand. Supply side neo-liberal policies have brought us here over the last 40 years.â âThe chance that prices will drop seems much more likely than any kind of upward movement,â James continues. âThe bike business was having trouble before COVID 19, and with the economic numbers looking very bad, and the chance of a V-shaped recovery doubtful to all but the economically uneducated among us, I would wait to buy. I expect used prices to drop and continue dropping for many months, and new prices to be steeply discounted. Back in 2009 I bought a brand new CBR1000RR for $7500 out the door. We have more debt now, in all forms, than in 2008, by a very significant amount, and this downturn might be a lot worse and last a lot longer.â Just like nobody knows for certain how the pandemic will play out, nobody knows either how long it will suppress the economy â and a lot of smart people are of the opinion it could drag on far longer than the USâ official projections. Lawrence Alan Kudlow is Director of the United States National Economic Council and President Trumpâs chief economic adviser. Kudlow held a similar position in the Bush II administration in December, 2007, when he said, âThe recession debate is over. Itâs not gonna happen. Time to move on. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And thatâs a minimum). The Bush boom is alive and well. Itâs finishing up its sixth splendid year with many more years to come.â (Bloomberg) As you may recall, thatâs not precisely how it played out. This time, the economyâs already taken a bigger hit than at any time since the Great Depression. When the stock market tanked in 1929, it kept tanking, in fits and starts, until 1932, and the country â the world in fact â didnât recover until WW2. (Happy V-E Day, by the way!) By Encik Tekateki â Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, This morning, we read in Politico: âThe U.S. economy is sitting in its deepest hole since the Great Depression, with more than 33 million Americans losing their jobs in just seven weeks and an unemployment rate now at 14.7 percent â and likely to rise to around 20 percent â under the weight of the coronavirus pandemicâŚ. And itâs likely to take years, perhaps even much of the next decade, to dig out.â In the final analysis⌠Pick which side youâre on, the pollyannas or the doom-and-gloomers, but it really doesnât much matter either way. The fact is it seems like you can get a great deal right now on a new motorcycle, depending on what model youâre after and what mood your dealer is in, though itâs equally true that by waiting a bit longer you might get an even better deal. But thatâs kind of betting against the home team, and it could mean another summer without the bike of your dreams. While youâre dithering⌠You canât put a price on love, can you? If the world economy is going to collapse or the pandemic is going to take you home to Jesus, at least youâll get a summer of great riding in. And if you swing one of those no-payments âtil November deals, how can you lose? If it all goes to hell, the joke will be on the bank. âBut this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.â âJohn Maynard Keynes Iâm still a big fan of buying used vehicles, but thatâs always been mostly out of necessity in my income bracket, and has become ingrained. As a guy whoâs been fortunate enough to ride all the new stuff for the last bunch of years, though, I have to say these last few have been truly golden, and I wouldnât hesitate to buy new today â especially at 1.9% â if I didnât always get to borrow new motorcycles. Electronics have transformed the game: lean-sensitive ABS, traction control, cruise control â itâs all magic, and very likely will save your bacon at some point, as well as enhance every ride. You Need to Go Places In closing, our friend Steve Natt offers this piece of unassailable wisdom: âYou still need to go places. Until there is a vaccine or treatment for this fucking virus, public transportation and Uber are no good: This marks the first time in the history of mankind that riding a motorcycle is actually safer than the alternatives. You might as well go with the new motorcycle.â The post Is Now the Time to Buy a New Motorcycle? appeared first on Motorcycle.com. 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