Top 10 bikes that died in 2018
They were introduced with fanfare but disappeared without a whimper
Listen to any manufactures’ spiel when they launch a new bike and they’ll have you believing that the new model, whether it’s a scooter or a superbike, is a game-changer that’s going to be lauded in the annals of motorcycling history for decades to come.
But when the same bike shuffles out of the model range, it’s a different story. Once basking in the limelight as their makers’ latest golden child, they’re dispatched in the shadows – erased from showrooms and pricelists with no tribute to the years of service they’ve performed.
This year has seen a particularly gruesome cull, with older models still being sold under old Euro3 emissions limits approaching the end of the two-year period of grace they were handed by derogation rules when the Euro4 standards came into force at the start of 2017.
So here’s our list of the top 10 bikes to have fallen under the axe so far this year. Each of them could still be found on their makers’ websites at the start of 2018, but have since been deleted.
10: Yamaha SR400
The SR400 is one of those bikes that’s been around forever – so long, in fact, that this is the second time it’s been ditched from the firm’s UK range. First introduced back in 1978, it’s one of Yamaha’s mainstay machines in the Japanese market, and despite disappearing from UK showrooms years ago it reappeared in 2014 as a way to capitalise on the boom in retro machines. It’s gone again now, although as it remains a popular machine in Japan – which has now adopted emissions standards largely in line with Euro4 – don’t rule out another comeback sometime in the future.
9: Triumph Trophy 1200
It only seems five minutes ago that Triumph launched its Trophy 1200. OK, so it was 2012, but when it comes to large-capacity touring bikes a six-year lifespan is a very short one. There wasn’t much wrong with it and the fact that Triumph has made the similarly-engined Tiger 1200 a Euro4-compliant machine shows that emissions weren’t really a problem, but buyers in the full-on tourer market are hard to sway from their BMWs.
