Britain’s best-loved…

Britain’s best loved

…helmet, and biker café, and race meeting, and more. Here’s motorcycling’s most popular everything of the past 12 months (and beyond)

Words Phil West

Which helmet is the UK’s favourite? What race meeting has the biggest crowd, and which place for food, tea and bike-based banter is the most popular? To try to find the best by any sort of credible yardstick, we’ve applied some ‘science’ and, where not available, asked the experts in their field and referred to suitable polls to find out the best-sellers and biggest award winners. Here are the most popular of all in 10 of the most popular motorcycling categories…

Used dealer: Superbike Factory

Phil Martin, manager for MCN’s dealer team sales: ‘They’ll never win an overall Dealer of the Year award because they only deal with second-hand bikes and a few new 125s. But I would say they’re the biggest dealer in terms of used bikes – and the UK’s biggest in terms of overall numbers.’

BSB round: Brands Hatch finale

Race meetings are all about attendance figures, but TV viewer numbers are also important – although exact numbers are often (and annoyingly) highly guarded for commercial reasons.

‘We wouldn’t give crowd figures,’ explains Laura Stevens, media and PR for the British Superbike championship. ‘But traditionally, the top three rounds in terms of crowd would be Brands Hatch finale, Cadwell Park (August bank holiday), and the first visit to Oulton Park.’ And TV/Eurosport figures? ‘The viewing figures usually correspond the same, however Donington Park second visit was high, too.’

New bike: Triumph Speed 400

As this is being compiled before the end of the year there’s still some selling to be done.

However, the MCIA’s official figures for the year to date (Jan-Oct) are a solid indication of which new bike will top the chart.

In 2023, the BMW R1250GS Adventure continued the GS’s ongoing reign as the UK’s best-selling new bike (over 125cc – Honda and Yamaha shift way more scooters and tiddlers). There were 1697 sales. In 2024, even with two months of sales to be added

BMW had shifted 1606 GSAs… but Triumph had beat them, having flogged even more examples of the new Speed 400 with 1625 bikes. You can read what makes it so popular on page 52. And, just to cement Triumph’s league-topping position, the Scrambler 400 X variant has been all-but-matching the Speed’s sales success. Small bikes genuinely are where it’s at.

Textile jacket: Oxford Mondial Advanced

‘This jacket was always a revelation for Oxford as it had a laminated waterproof membrane and cost about half as much as an equivalent Gore-Tex jacket,’ reckons Keith Roissetter of Sportsbikeshop in Harlow.

‘It’s been replaced by the Mondial 2, but we’ve had good stock of the original throughout 2024 and at £200 it’s a steal. The membrane is bonded directly to the back of the jacket’s outer shell, so it doesn't saturate like jackets with a separate waterproof liner. That’s why the Mondial is such good value and why it’s been the most popular jacket this year.’

Biker Café: Jolly’s Bike Stop, Devon

This one’s less of a ‘best attended’, more a popularity contest. A recent poll by the UK Biker Café Facebook group attracted more than 3500 votes for the ‘Top UK Biker Cafés of 2024’ and this year Josie’s Bike Stop at The Jolly Roger in Bovey Tracey, Newton Abbot, Devon, came out tops. Praised for its regular Thursday bike nights and friendly atmosphere, it’s a popular stop for ride-outs and groups. Second was The Old Stores Motorbike Café in Mold, North Wales. Third went to the Owls Nest, Llandovery, while the Bike office lunchtime regular – Two Flags at Morcott, Rutland – came fourth.

Used bike: Honda GL1800 Gold Wing (!)

How do you find the most popular used bike in Britain? You sneak into the MCN offices while they’re enjoying an extended ‘working’ lunch and delve into the data from their online Bikes for Sale to find the most-searched-for models.

The top ten for the past 12 months is either a) an eye-opening revelation and proof of the cruiser’s huge resurgence, or b) evidence that a lot of people who search for used bikes online are perhaps not actual buyers but rather non-riders typing in famous model names that they’ve heard. We’re going with the latter, given that there are two Harley-Davidsons in the top five. Still interesting reading, mind.

Show/festival: Motorcycle Live

Biggest bike bash of the year? Motorcycle Live. This year’s show at the NEC attracted ‘just under 90,000’ visitors, with 11 colleges and universities attending ‘career days’ to encourage new riders and jobs within the industry. Good stuff. It remains easily the UK’s best-attended show. In comparison, ‘over 30,000’ attended the two-day Devitt MCN London Motorcycle Show in February, with around the same going to the Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show in Stafford in October. The ABR Festival at Ragley Hall, Warks, in June, was capped at 17,500.

Dealer: West Coast Motorcycles, Glasgow

Potentially contentious as we’re not after the biggest or the most commercially successful, but the somewhat subjective ‘best loved’. So we challenged an expert: MCN dealer team sales manager Phil Martin. ‘There are no league tables – different dealers work with different manufacturers, there’s new and used… But the most recent dealer to win MCN’s Dealer of the Year award is West Coast Motorcycles.

‘Having had significant success with Harley-Davidson, they opened up with Triumph in the last year or so and that seems to be going really well. They do a lot in their community, put on regular bike nights, and they’ve got great customer feedback.’

Helmet: Scorpion Exo‐1400 Evo Carbon Air

Sportsbikeshop is the ‘biggest online motorcycle clothing and accessories retailer in the UK’, which means they know lots about kit and clobber. The clothing and accessories retailer has nine stores nationwide, stocks all the leading brands, claims to get more website visitors than any other online UK motorcycle store, and therefore knows better than any what sells.

‘This is Sportsbikeshop’s top-selling helmet for the first 10 months of 2024,’ Keith Roissetter, manager of the Harlow branch, tells us. ‘It’s thanks to a mix of light weight, practical features and cool looks. The carbon-fibre shell is light and looks great – and there’s a tinted visor included as well as the standard clear one, which definitely adds to the appeal. The Airfit system helps, too, as inflatable pockets behind the cheek pads mean we can tune the fit to suit a lot of riders without having to replace the pads. The price has been another big factor: there’s a new model out, so this one is less than £250. Thankfully we’ve still got a good supply in the core sizes.’

World championship race: British MotoGP, Silverstone

If you watched this year’s British GP on TV and thought it looked a bit quiet in the stands, it’s perhaps because you were watching on telly instead of being there to witness Jake Dixon’s Moto2 win. Silverstone was better attended than in 2023 – total for the weekend was 117,867, which was a slight increase. Shame the number for Sunday’s race day was slightly down, from 48,564 to 42,529.

In comparison, weekend attendance at the Donington Park World Superbike round was 52,743. Which is clear proof that we require another Foggy. Back in the late 1990s, at the height of ‘Foggy Mania’, WSB comfortably whupped GP’s ass when it came to spectators – in 1999 when Carl Fogarty was chasing his fourth title, the Brands WSB round was witnessed by a staggering 121,000 fans. It was the biggest single-day attendance at any British sporting event that year.

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