Ducati sold 53,004 motorcycles in 2018, which is a 5 percent drop from its total sales figure in 2017. The silver lining, however, is that Ducati sold over 9,700 bikes of the Panigale series in 2018 (70 percent increase from 2017), 6,100 of which were the Panigale V4 – Ducati’s first production motorcycle to sport a four-cylinder engine. This led Ducati to capture 26 percent of the superbike market across the world, meaning that one in every four superbikes sold last year was a Panigale.
The Multistrada line-up did extremely well for the brand as well, with a sales figure of 11,829 bikes in 2018. According to Ducati, 6,569 of those bikes were the new Multistrada 1260, which brought a 25 percent increase to the adventure-tourer sales.
While sales were down 11 percent in the USA, Ducati continued to do well in its home country, Italy, recording a 4.5 percent increase in sales, with 9,200 bikes sold. This figure meant that Italy was the brand’s largest market for the year 2018, taking the top spot from USA.
Sales in other countries were strong as well with 2,444 motorcycles sold in Spain (+8 percent), 1,941 sold in Japan (+2 percent), 1,276 sold in Switzerland (+2.2 percent) and China seeing a bump of 23 percent.
Francesco Milicia, global sales director for Ducati said, “To rise to new market challenges, we’re working to make our sales network more efficient than ever. For 2019, we’ve also overhauled the Scrambler 800 range – which, among other things, has received a major active safety boost in the form of cornering ABS – and launched new products such as the Diavel 1260 and the Hypermotard 950. The Multistrada family saw the arrival of the 1260 Enduro and 950 S, giving customers a wider choice than ever. In total, we’re talking about nine new models that allow us to look to the future with confidence.”
Azaman Chothia
Vishal Venugopal
