Speciality
Cruisin' Guzzisti
According to the January 2023 issue of Bike magazine (UK) it is the Benelli TRK502X that has been Italy’s best-selling bike for three years. I don’t know if that’s correct but given it’s relatively low price on account of the Chinese QJ Motor ownership it makes sense. Interestingly even a prestige manufacturer like MV uses the same motor in its new Lucky Explorer 5.5.Hi, italian here, one very important aspect when buying a bike is the proximity and quality of dealers. Piaggio has very few dealers compared to the japanese brands, or even BMW, and also not equally distributed in the country. Piaggio has 93 dealers, mainly in the north and center Italy, BMW Motorrad 107, also biased towards the north, but less so.
The number of dealers is increasing and that’s good, but it will take some time to have a significant impact (and of course Piaggio/Guzzi must keep making nice, high quality and desirable bikes).
Also consider that BMWs, especially the 1200/1250 GS are consistently top sellers in Italy for years now, so there are a lot on the roads. Just in the last few years Guzzi came back on the top sales charts, thanks mainly to the V7, and also the V85TT, so there aren’t that many driving around.
I also agree with scottmastrocinque that, in northern Italy, thanks to many more dealers and a “proximity effect” to the factory, you can se a lot of Guzzi around, especially in Lombardy. I live in the ”lower” part of the “boot” and I can attest that, in the last five or so years, I see many more Guzzi around, especially V7s.