The Personal Blog Of
Boston Motorcycle Lawyer

Why Ridley Motorcycles Didn’t Catch On
November 30, 2009

Bikers are a very diverse group and other than the mutual love of riding motorcycles, and often vary on riding style, bikes, apparel, age, race, sex, riding skill, income, profession, education level and dozens of other factors.

With all these differences, it’s understandable that that the motorcycle industry itself is so diverse. Motorcycle manufacturers produce all sorts of bikes from the 200MPH Suzuki Hayabusa to the 300cc Johnny Pag cruisers, to the mammoth 2000cc Kawasaki Vulcan.

There is one common thread across over 99% of motorcycles and that is shifting gears.

It stands to reason that there should be a large, untapped demographic of current and potential riders that want to ride a real motorcycle but do not want to shift gears. That’s what Ridley Motorcycles banked on. Clay and Jay Ridley formed Ridley Motorcycles in 1995 to pursue their passion for building motorcycles and their desire to build the world’s best automatic motorcycles.

While they push innovation, sales are very small by comparison. Their desire to be technical mavericks is admirable but, they seemed to have lost sight of some critical factors.

• Tradition: Motorcycles have not really changed since their inception. One of the overriding themes with bikers is becoming part of motorcycling tradition. Automatic motorcycles somehow deflate that tradition.

• Price: New Ridley motorcycles cost generally $15,000-$20,000. For that price, you can buy bikes ranging from Harley Davidson to Honda. In some cases, you could almost buy 2 brand new motorcycles for the cost of a Ridley Auto-Glide Chopper.

• Substitutes: There are plenty of automatic two-wheeled vehicles on the road; they are called mopeds or scooters. They come in a wide variety of styles and sizes and some are even highway legal. You can buy approximately 2 2009 Suzuki Burgman 650 Scooters for the cost of 1 Ridley Auto-Glide Sport and ride all the same roads.

• Competition: Not only does Ridley compete with traditional motorcycles and scooters, but also with Asian automatic motorcycle producers. The QLink Legacy 250 is a fully automatic bike produced in China and retails for under $3000, The Chinese CF MOTO V3 and V5 are fully automatic 250cc bikes also retailing for under $3000.

Ridley makes great looking motorcycles but you won’t catch me on one of them. Bikers want real bikes. Any way you slice it, Ridley produces great looking scooters and most bikers would rather drive a car than ride a scooter.