Dale's Motorcycle Blog

In this case, it’s the consequence of financing a motorcycle, with the terrible first-year depreciation that motorcycles have. The NADA Book gives my Sporty a trade-in value of $6,000. I owe 14k. No matter how you cut it, thats bad math for any hope of a trade-in.

There’s a glut of second-hand Sportsters on the market right now. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care about that, but I went to the local triumph dealer for a look-see at a brand new 2006 Rocket III Classic they have on the floor. because it’s a 2006, they are really motivated to move it.

So, I rode the sporty over and told them that if they could get me a payment at $300 per month or below, and take my Sporty in trade, I’d buy it. Well, they tried. Their first pass, though, came out with a payment $485 per month. That was a no-go, so they went back, slashed another thousand dollars off the Rocket, and offered me $7,000 for my Sportster ($1000 over blue book) and the payment still came out to $404. So, naturally, I declined.

They are willing to go pretty far to get that 2006 Rocket out of their showroom, though.

Still, I’m about $7000 upside down on the loan for my Sporty, so it’s pretty much a no-go on any sort of trade-in. However…

Next month, I’ll have about $3,000 in cash I could put into the deal. If that 2006 R3 Custom is still there at the end of October, I may try to run those numbers again, and, when they get to th lowest payment they can, I’ll ask what the numbers will be if I drop another three grand in cash on the deal. That might ed up being a nice monthly number.

If that 2006 is still there, of course.