Dealer Demo Ride: "If you break it, you buy it!"

[Gaoler]

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Dude, this is so far from true it's not funny.

Manufacturers look at demo days as marketing investment. The demo days generate sales, brand loyalty, and free word-of-mouth advertising.

The fuel, insurance, and event staffing costs are legal corporate advertising expenses.
They wouldn't do it if it didn't benefit them financially

 

[timtune]

I like long and low cruisers, a la V-Rod, so I was partial to the Scout Bobber.

This reminds me of test riding a Yammie Bolt. Looks like a fun ride until you realize how much forward controls suck.

 

[Lightcycle]

Bikes getting messed up is just a cost of doing business and aren't really a huge loss to manufacturers... they're write offs I'm sure.
'Probably gets entered in their books as advertising and promotion.

Write offs come out of profit but if a manufacturer is healthy enough the occasional hit shouldn't hurt too much. Dealers have smaller budgets.

The factory might farm the repairs out to a dealer because factories run production lines far differently than a repair shop. Stopping a production line to fix a one off sets schedules back. Workers are assemblers, not mechanics, However OEM part prices are a fraction of retail.

The demo bikes are insured. If they get messed up, the insurance company will cover the repairs.

But yes, they will probably write off the insurance premiums and any deductibles they have to pay in the event of an accident.

Was recently in a situation where the dealership messed up a repair and I asked for a loaner bike while waiting for replacement parts. They gave me a demo bike, but told me that the insurance was specific to demo rides and for 24 hours per rider at a time. They had to write a new insurance policy for me to take the bike home for a week or two.

 

[Lightcycle]

This reminds me of test riding a Yammie Bolt. Looks like a fun ride until you realize how much forward controls suck.

Agree. The V-Rod has a mid-mount kit for most of their later model-year runs, which I would definitely put on.

Or go for the Street Rod with mid-mount, higher clearance pegs.

 

[DoASkid]

The demo bikes are insured. If they get messed up, the insurance company will cover the repairs.

Lol. No. OEM demo bikes are not insured. Manufacturers bear the costs of all crashes, mechanicals from clowns who like to rev bomb the things, and theft of parts that happen on manufacturer demo rides.

Was recently in a situation where the dealership messed up a repair and I asked for a loaner bike while waiting for replacement parts. They gave me a demo bike, but told me that the insurance was specific to demo rides and for 24 hours per rider at a time. They had to write a new insurance policy for me to take the bike home for a week or two.

That's a separate thing for dealer demos, which almost never get used for OEM days.

Manufacturers look at demo days as marketing investment. The demo days generate sales, brand loyalty, and free word-of-mouth advertising.
The fuel, insurance, and event staffing costs are legal corporate advertising expenses.
They wouldn't do it if it didn't benefit them financially

Yes, all of that is true. But that's not the same thing as crash damage. Re your last line: Why do you think manufacturer demo tours are much more rare and stilted these days then years gone by?

Then again, given all the bragging in this forum about thrashing and crashing demo bikes and how they only do it so they know what to buy used later on anyway.... I don't think I blame OEMs for winding those things back.

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