Ural: Fresh start or final straw?

Ural Motorcycles is going in an entirely different direction. Will the change be a fresh start that allows the company, which dates to World War II, survive? Or is this a radical change of direction that will leave behind the traditional customers for the quirky sidecar rigs while failing to attract new buyers?

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Ural is fighting for survival. Ural co-owner and company President Ilya Khait says the same of the radical changes. "The alternative was losing Ural altogether. We’d rather see the name move forward than carved on a tombstone," he wrote in an open letter to customers posted on the company website.

blue Ural Gear Up traditional model — Production of Ural legacy models has been halted. They always appealed to a specific kind of rider. As Zack Courts noted when he tested this one, "It looks like it was pulled straight off the set of an Indiana Jones movie and sounds like a cross between an old car and a piece of farm equipment." Photo by Zack Courts.

In short, Ural has ceased production of its "legacy models," the two-wheel-drive motorcycle-and-sidecar rigs that look like they could have been fending off the German invasion of Russia more than 80 years ago. Is that pause permanent? Khait says that's uncertain at this point. But for now, at least, Ural will be producing the Ural Neo 500 instead, a very different looking motorcycle and sidecar rig built with the Yingang company in China.

Unsurprisingly, the radically different new model has not been universally welcomed, as you can see in the reactions to the company's post of the Neo on Instagram.

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It seems like a risky gamble. Buyers who wanted the old-time look of the legacy Ural models are unlikely to take to the appearance of the Neo, so Ural will have to court an entire new cohort of buyers. And sidecars are not an easy sale, to begin with. But, as Khait described it in his letter, a risky move is better than certain failure. The company was no longer able to build its legacy models profitably.

Ural Neo 500 — It has a sidecar, but that's the only thing about the Ural Neo that's going to look familiar to anyone who has known Ural during the past 80 years. Ural Motorcycles photo.

A series of life-threatening challenges

For Ural, existential crises seem to come along at regular intervals and the company has survived them all so far, so maybe it can survive this one, too.

Formed from the need to mechanize troops in World War II, the company grew in the Soviet era to employ nearly 10,000 people at its plant in Irbit, primarily producing vehicles for the domestic market. The first crisis came with the fall of the Soviet Union. With cheap cars now being imported from eastern Europe, Russians weren't buying motorcycles with sidecars. The company nearly went under.

Ural was bought by Khait and other investors who revamped the company, greatly reducing the workforce and buying parts and components from suppliers instead of trying to make every single part in-house. Though production continued in Irbit, Khait ran the company from a small office and warehouse in Washington state. Then came the next crisis when Russia invaded Ukraine and Russian companies were hit with international sanctions. Ural hastily moved production across the border to a plant in Kazakhstan to avoid the sanctions, while still keeping some operations in Irbit. But Khait says that model has become unsustainable. Then, on top of that, the company was hit with the new tariffs this year, making it even more unprofitable to import to the United States, Ural's largest market.

rider wearing a retro style helmet in the woods on a Ural with sidecar — Urals have appealed to a small subset of riders who want a certain experience and style, not performance. In recent years, the company has been producing fewer than 2,000 units a year. Photo by Jun Song.

Once again in financial difficulties, Ural is already dealing with unhappy customers who have not been able to get parts for their older models. I doubt many of those customers, who found the idea of a Russian BMW-knockoff straight out of the 1940s to be a charming choice for personal transportation will shift to deciding a far more modern-looking unit styled and built in China is a suitable substitute. Which means Ural will have to find an entirely new set of customers to survive its latest crisis.