... am kinda wondering how many there still are 'round and/or active?
Curious Mak ::) ::) ::)
Hello Mak, glad to see you back on here more latley!
On your question, can you clarify? Not sure exactly what you meant- how many Drifters? Drifter riders in Australia?
Or maybe "how many fellas on this Forum"?
How about both questions, how many active members on the forum as of today, how many Drifters running about upside down in the land down under as of today.
We needs pics! 8)
Now, where is his bike?
Quote from: DC on August 03, 2016, 15:10:35 PM
Now, where is his bike?
The man AND his bike.....
Hi Mak, Some countries have a decent registration of vehicles.
In The Netherlands registration has led to public display of all filed information on any plate. This site encounters an immense popularity.
https://ovi.rdw.nl (https://ovi.rdw.nl) (by the way, my plate is MD-PS-79) You can see when I bought the bike and when it was registered, if it is stolen, its weight, power and lots of other things.
It is also possible to look into the database and see how many of a model are still around. What people who request registration exactly call a model is different however. I can only narrow it down to 550 VN1500's and 1.318 VN 1500's (among the latter group 32 "1500 Drifter") currently being registered in The Netherlands.
https://www.rdwdata.nl/merken (https://www.rdwdata.nl/merken)
https://opendata.rdw.nl/Voertuigen/Open-Data-RDW-Gekentekende_voertuigen/m9d7-ebf2#Filter (https://opendata.rdw.nl/Voertuigen/Open-Data-RDW-Gekentekende_voertuigen/m9d7-ebf2#Filter)
Not many have called our bike Drifter but they did according to the first bike being permitted on the road and been tested. This is often VN1500 or VN1500 Classic.
This example gives a poor result and isn't a high number but when one could ask for numbers being sold and the amount still being on registration in a much larger country we could have a common factor that allows to define results on the total of bikes still there. Problem is: many bikes are exported to countries where they were never sold or because of price. It may look as if they weren't there.
Large rise in vintage motorcycles
(https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2009/35/not-only-are-motorcyclists-ageing-they-re-riding-more-vintage-machines)
Not only motorcycle owners are ageing, the bikes they ride are also growing older. One fifth of the motorcycle fleet in the Netherlands consists of machines aged 25 year or older; this is the equivalent of nearly 120 thousand motorcycles. This puts the vintage motorcycle fleet at the four times the number of nine years ago.
source: CBS (Dutch central agency of statistics).
The above makes figures about how long a motorbike should last look pretty obsolete.
Hey, Good to see some Aussie posts. I am still active though I do not come online very often, mainly due to in the past being one of the only AUS based drifter owners that came online. Re how many in Au. check out http://www.vulcandrifterriders.com/forum/index.php?topic=18150.msg31672#msg31672 I posted a few years ago some details I got from Kawasaki Australia re numbers sold here in AUS.