Best Toronto Motorcycle Show

Soulcatcher668 said:
There is no reason not to release a filled out floorplan unless it's mostly cured meats and space heaters.
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Last time I went about 7-8 years ago there was a booth there selling TENS machines, which given I had yanked my back out that morning and was walking around bent up like a cripple, was timely. They hooked me up to a demo unit and 15 minutes later I was walking much better. I bought the damn thing point blank. Overpaid all to hell, I think it was $300 or something stupid like that, but it was before they were $30 on Amazon for basically the same thing now. But whatever, in the moment I gladly paid that much to be in 70% less discomfort.

I still have the thing, it travels with me on the bike to this day in my "**** I hope I don't need" lower saddlebag along with my air compressor, tire goo, tools, rain gear, first aid kit, etc.
 
Friend told me the story from his time in a small town in Alberta years back. One tavern and the same stripper for the whole week. Looks and size didn't matter, it was still the best show in town, and the bar was full every night...I think the same applies to our motorcycle show.


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Maybe 20 years ago my brother and I went to airport M/C show and there was a vendor selling mini-bikes. We kept walking past him and finally we decided we'd buy one between the two of us and rotate it between our houses. We got into the back of his Isuzu SUV and couldn't wait to try it out. He lives on a court, so no traffic and it was dry, but cold All the our kids were there and we zoomed up and down showing them how to work the controls, 20 minutes later the kids were inside playing video games and my brother and I thought okay wait until spring. Same result, between 5 kids not a one was interested. We gave it that year and next and then one of his coworkers bought it.
Sometimes the bike show can really drain your pockets!
 
Generations of young people saw James Dean, Steve McQueen, Elvis, Arnold, Sylvester, and the Fonz riding big Harleys and Triumphs and other bad mofo bikes of the time, and so they all grew up wanting motorcycles.

And then you two showed up on a mini bike...:rolleyes:....


@Sunday Rider 😂
 
i'm probably one of the few to actually look at bikes but also because the crowd i used to ride with...NONE of them ride anymore lol. or at least aren't active enough to care about bike shows.
 
It's been a bit of a desert for the past few years in terms of new bikes being shown at the CDN shows.

I wish we had the kind of attention the manufacturers lavish on shows like EICMA. We're talking about spending the summer of 2026 riding around Europe. Maybe we extend that trip to still be around Italy in November? :unsure:

Might need to massage those Schengen Zone time limit restrictions...

#stretchgoals
 
Another problem too, is that we get bikes so long after other markets, that by the time they do arrive here, they aren't even "new" in the news sense. We've already seen months, or sometimes even years worth of reviews and videos on them.

As a content creator I'd love to be the first to get my hands on some new small displacement bike that will sell in huge volumes, and be the first to create a **** ton of content on it before anyone else can... That's not really possible here.

Case in point, I wanted to do that with the Triumph 400s, but we got those about 6-9 months after they were released in India. Everything you could ever want to know was already out there. Everyone had already seen them riding in the Himalaya's. By the time they were new to us they weren't new anymore. You could know everything you wanted to know about the bike before it even landed in Canada.

The Honda Trail 125 was another one I wanted to buy, but that was even worse. We got it literally YEARS after the US. You may have even seen one in the US a year or two before it ever arrived to it's Canadian launch.

If the point of the shows is to see the new stuff, shouldn't the new stuff be new, and not just new to us?
 
adri said:
If the point of the shows is to see the new stuff, shouldn't the new stuff be new, and not just new to us?
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If you were a Canadian vendor, would you invest the time and resources bringing a bike that may not sell here for a while, or possibly ever sell here, just so dreamers could check it out, or would you spend that same time and resources on bringing bikes to a show that your customers can for sure buy immediately or in the very near future?

Sounds like you need to travel the world's bigger market moto shows where they showcase these bikes to create your content.

Also not sure the point of these small market Canadian shows is to see the global new stuff. It's simply to see moto stuff, of which some of it might be newer to the local market. And taste the latest pepperoni sticks or feel the developments in massage chairs.
 
shanekingsley said:
Sounds like you need to travel the world's bigger market moto shows where they showcase these bikes to create your content.
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Or get invited to the initial press launches of these motorcycles.

But to get an invite, you need to have a fairly large following/audience (digital or traditional) or be a member of a bigger organization (Revzilla, MCN, etc). Then the manufacturer throws a big catered party/ride in an exotic location, with lux accommodations and a celebrity ride leader so you feel special and gush about the... whatbikearewereviewingthisweekagainohbutthesteakwasfabulous!
 
shanekingsley said:
If you were a Canadian vendor, would you invest the time and resources bringing a bike that may not sell here for a while, or possibly ever sell here, just so dreamers could check it out, or would you spend that same time and resources on bringing bikes to a show that your customers can for sure buy immediately or in the very near future?
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That's not what's happening. Yes there are costs associated with bringing a motorcycle to a country, but that isn't why we get the motorcycles later, because Canadian distributors typically aren't even the ones paying those costs.

Canadian motorcycle standards for homologation and import are basically the same as the US ones. Smaller Canadian offices cheat having to pay the price by just piggy backing off of whatever the US invests to standardize and import. I'm oversimplifying, but that's the gist of why 90% of the motorcycle sold in Canada are ALSO sold in the US. The Canadian industry piggy backs off of the US so that we don't have to make those investments.

BUT, we still get the same bikes here much later, despite costs and time no longer being an issue. What gives?

We're a low volume market, and that means we're a low priority market in the eyes of the global head office.

When Honda (as an example) needs to decide how many units of a motorcycle each country gets, and who gets them first, the high volume, high priority markets always get prioritized.

That's why dealers in foreign markets will sell out of a hot model, get re-stocked, and sell out again, before Honda will even start shipping Canada's allocation of that model.

When you hear a dealer say "I can't keep (model) in stock" what they're really saying is "Canada is a low priority market. There aren't enough units sent to Canada for me to get as many a year as I'd like to."

When you see that dealer sell out of the same model year after year, and wonder "Why doesn't this idiot ever order more?" - he probably isn't an idiot, but every year he is given less than what he asked for.

And when you read a guy posting that he can't get a new motorcycle before the internet has already been saturated with content by people who have already had the thing for months before it landed here, it's probably because he's operating in a low priority market.

It's not the creator or the dealer or the Canadian distributor's fault. Nor is it a lack of investment. It's just the reality of being in a low priority market.
 
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