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It's annual accountability time at Common Tread, when I dig up last year's moto predictions story and check to see if we got any right this year. The results for 2025 are a mixed bag and call into question the value of experience, as the youngest member of the team, Dustin Wheelen, clearly had the best record.
Let's start with our Director of Content Programing Spurgeon Dunbar, who predicted that both Triumph and Ducati would come out with dual-sport motorcycles based on their off-road and supermoto platforms. He made what sounded like a logical case, but maybe he was just overly optimistic about how soon it could happen. So far, while both companies have continued their incursions into the off-road segment, neither has a street-legal dual-sport for sale. Yet.
For his long-shot prediction, Spurgeon noted that troubled giant KTM was already getting ready to sell its stake in MV Agusta, and he predicted that during the course of the year it would also shed other brands. Namely, GASGAS and Felt bicycles, leaving only KTM, Husqvarna, and WP Suspension under the orange umbrella. While everyone expects more big changes with KTM after the change in control, Spurgeon's prediction hasn't happened yet.
Zack Courts predicted that new father Spurgeon would buy "a dad bike" in 2025. Really, you'd think Zack, as a father himself, would know better. Adding a toddler to the household doesn't mean you buy a dad bike, it means that between cleaning food off the floor and researching new and fascinating strains of germs sweeping through the daycare center you don't even have time to ride the motorcycles you already own. No, Spurgeon did not buy a dad bike in 2025.
Zack's long-shot prediction also revolved around KTM's slow-motion collapse. He predicted that Triumph (or maybe other companies) would expand its off-road lineup to take KTM's market share. Just as Spurgeon didn't get the new dual-sports he predicted from Triumph and Ducati, Zack couldn't point to new off-road models from Triumph. And while like Spurgeon, he may be early rather than wrong, so far it's hard to identify another manufacturer that is meaningfully taking advantage of KTM's turmoil to gain market share in the off-road segment.
Dustin Wheelen predicted that sales of new motorcycles in the United States would continue their downward trend in 2025. While we don't have full-year figures, all the evidence suggests he's right. Through the first three quarters of the year, sales were down 7.3% from the same period in 2024, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council (and down an amazingly similar 7.2% in Europe). And the fourth quarter didn't bring the kind of dramatic turnaround that would erase that 7.3% decline.
Dustin's long-shot prediction was that Buell would keep its promise and begin delivering its Super Cruiser model to customers in late 2025. Why should it be a long-shot prediction for a company to deliver product? Because Buell had promised so many new models previously and then never delivered, from its somewhat bizarre Baja DR to the SuperTouring to talk of entire new families of engines. The company recently posted the video below, showing a Super Cruiser being delivered, as well as another video of two Super Cruisers going to a shop in Connecticut. We haven't been able to confirm that any other customers have actually received a Super Cruiser, but since it appears at least one has, Dustin's prediction has to be considered technically correct.
Time to grade myself. Zero Motorcycles announced plans for its XE and XB lightweight, off-road electric motorcycles late in 2024, but we didn't get a chance to ride them until late in 2025. But from the beginning, I was happy to see Zero going after a segment that, in my mind, makes perfect sense for electric motorcycles instead of trying to build adventure-touring or sport motorcycles that are held back by range limitations and I predicted the XE and XB would instantly be Zero's top-selling models. The numbers I've been given are incomplete for the year and unofficial, but I think my prediction is clearly true for 2025 and will be more true in the years to come. Imports such as Surron and Talaria have a head start in this class, but in this case it feels like Zero is swimming with the tide, instead of against it.
For my long-shot prediction, I listed four racing records and milestones I expected to see in 2025. Some were easy, but the long shot would be getting all four right and before February was over, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. That's because I predicted Jett Lawrence would tie the record of 14 Supercross wins in a season, held by Jeremy McGrath and Ricky Carmichael, but instead a torn ACL took him out of the SX season early. I did get the other three right, however: Cameron Beaubier broke the record for most career AMA Pro Racing wins in all classes, Marc Márquez surpassed Ángel Nieto for third place in all-time Grand Prix wins, and Toprak Razgatlıoğlu blew past Álvaro Bautista into second place on the all-time World Superbike wins list, as all three won their championships.
Our predictions for 2026 are in, so I'll be back a year from now to see if we did any better at foreseeing the future.
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