Motorcycle invoice prices

It truly doesn't matter what a dealer lists the bike for, they'll almost always add something on the backend. The $8999 is to get you in the door, that's it. The only price anyone should be interested in is what it costs to get it on the street, in your name. This includes fees, taxes and registration, minus trade for tax purposes. My bike was $7300-something. Woohoo, right? No, OTD was $9500 to park it in my garage with a license plate on it.
This next part isn't directed at you JLG.
I see posts all the time of people saying "Yea, my OTD was $X, plus fees". That's not what OTD means.
Let's try this... Bike K is $8999. Dest & setup is $500, doc fee $50, tag/title $150. Trade in value, $2500. The only thing not taxable is the tag/title (in my state, it has its own tax, called VLT), and the trade value is deducted before tax is calculated at... 8% as an example. So...
8999+500+50-2500=7049x1.08=$7612.92+150=
$7762.92. However, that's still not the true OTD price, because the trade value has to be added back in. The true OTD price in this case is $10,262.92.
The same principle goes for any down payment, it may make the bottom line better, especially when financing, it still needs to be added back in for a true Out The Door price. And it's taxable too. An equivalent down instead of the trade raises the OTD by $200 in this example. And you have to consider if you have the time or the money to sell it yourself to offset that cost. If you only get $200 more if you sell it yourself, you're a masochist.

"...$7300-something. Woohoo, right? No, OTD was $9500."

All true, of course, though not really my question. And yes, to me, OTD means the total - not the total + extra. I sometimes phrase it OTD (excluding taxes) bc taxes are deferred if you are buying out of state and obviously the tax rates vary.


As everyone knows, freight, setup, doc fees are the common gouges. I had a dealer recently quote $1700 for freight/setup! This is borderline bait & switch but it seems to be very common practice in the cycle world. My experience is that freight/setup should be more in the $500 range. I do know of one dealership that openly advertises that they DO NOT add extra fees; their price quotes are quite good as well - they move a lot of units. Unfortunately, they sell Hondas.

The above have gone away substantially in the auto sales, but this is BS is alive and well for cycle sales.

Back to the original question: if a new 2013 can be sold for $7K (assuming the fees are not ridiculous) I find it unlikely that $9K is "below cost" for a new 2014; the math just doesn't add up.

In ways, but a dealer needs bikes sitting on the floor. It was always good for business to have a few older, new bikes on the floor marked down. Even if you did not sell them , it was almost like a prop. Especially when a 14, 15 and 16 had so little difference between them.

Discounts showed you were ready to work with people and these non current machines were perfect to drop people down to.

Half the people walking through the door could not buy a lawnmower on credit. Often times you could still get them into the older bikes. Creative paperwork if you want to call it that.

There were certain customers you just showed the door to. It was going to take 2-3 hours all total to help them and deal with finance, paperwork etc. When I got someone fighting for that last 25.00, I'd usually blow up the deal and wait for a payment shopper.

On a deal where I was selling a ninja 1000 who's original price was 11,999...... lets say its marked down to what my local dealer has. They have a 2014, blue, marked down to 8699.00. Brand new. Freight and set up 500.00. Tax and license is what is it and I think thats 6% locally.

On that deal if someone asked for anything, Id show them the door. Theres not enough money left in that deal to spend time working on.

Heres a decent deal:

Motorcycles, Road Bikes New Classifieds for Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming | ksl.com

That shop buys a lot of bikes from dealers who go out of business. On a deal like this, cost is ????

Just traded my 2012 in for a brand new 2014.... So here's the deal... the deal where the dealer makes some money and I am happy.

Base price on the new 2014 with KQR bags $9,000
Freight/handling/setup 500
Sales tax 808
License fee 149
OTD Price $10,457

Keep in mind this is in California... tax and license are probably higher than the rest of the universe. Also, you may be able to get a cheaper base price depending on where you live.

They gave me $4,500 for my 2012 which had 48,300 miles on it, but a Racetech Suspension, OEM heated grips, OEM gel seat, Puig racing screen, OEM engine and axle sliders. They did all the maintenance on the bike so they knew it was solid.

Great time to get a steal on those '14s with the '16s out and the new Versys 1000 taking some buyers. In addition, the new Suzuki GSX S1000 F is out which is seen as a direct competitor to the N1k and has an MSRP of 1k less. Dealers are anxious to move the '14s before the holiday slow-down as well.

So hey this is my third Ninja 1000... can you tell I love this bike?

BrokeSolid said:

With the upgrades you already had done, why get a new one? Is 50k your standard point of trade up? Where you looking to get the 14 improvments? At what point did you trade your first one? Just curious after 50k, how was the bike doing? I don't put more than 5k on a bike a year, so I plan to keep mine for a while, just curious on your thoughts.

Click to expand...

The suspension was the major upgrade on my 12 and it was due for a fork oil change. I was also due for another valve clearance service as well as sprocket and chain changeout so that would have been an expensive service at 50k. It's not really my standard point of trade up, but I was pretty sure the GM of the dealership would be wanting to move that 14. The 12 was running fantastically.... but I am meticulous about service. Plenty more miles in that bike and the dealer knew it because they did all the service.

I really was wanting the hard bags on the 14 more than anything else... I was getting tired of the strap on soft bags when touring. ABS was a motivator as well. Traction control not so much but who knows, it may come in handy. I don't mind a little slidin' around.

My first N1k was a 2012 as well... bought in fall of 2011, dropped it at 15k summer of 2012. It was very difficult to get parts to fix it because the bike was pretty new and many of the parts were back ordered for months... so I just traded it in "as is" for a new 2012.