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In his excellent book Market Domination author Steve Hannaford explores how consolidation in an industry leads to conversion between erstwhile “competing” products and ultimately reduces choice for customers:

Competitive differences tend to narrow over time, as they must when companies are trying to keep up with better selling rivals. When markets are dominated by a few companies, the consequence is a notable sameness among the big players and their products. Erstwhile competitors become increasingly similar, in strategy and in their impact on society. We might call this a side effect of competition for market dominance, because it is not directly part of the high-level financial struggles that motivate the market but is almost incidental to the bigger issues. Nevertheless, it may have a direct impact on our daily life.

As Hannaford notes, this is not to argue there is no difference in handling between a Toyota Camry and a Ford Taurus (or in our case the Honda CRF450R and the Suzuki RM-Z450.) But it’s almost certain that gap is narrowing. If you go back to the 1950s and 1960s you can see wide variety in both style and approach to offroad motorcycles. In the 1970s the technology wars began and the variety in modifications, experiments, and technologies was explosive. But by the mid-1980s most of the variety had been shuffled out of the dirt bike market. The Japanese, with their big conglomerates (making automobiles, ships, trains, power equipment, etc.) had the resources to match and absorb every innovation made by a competitor, and the dollars to out market them. Again, from Market Domination:

Certainly, originality can be a plus. But as oligopolies tighten, rivals have the means and interest to match every competitors breakthrough. The comparative advantage of any original move is short-lived, readily imitated. As we have seen in Chapter 4, real, disruptive innovation can create problems for bigger companies. Recognizing and adopting useful, bite-size innovations, however, is something many market-leading companies are really expert at.

What they are also expert at is killing any disruptive innovation – either through buying up the innovator or simply burying it through media and marketing. Within a few short years the real choices for motorcycle customers had dropped from dozens to a handful. Today the motorcycle market is dominated by six companies. That the products are all the same is apparent every time you read a bike test in a modern magazine and one of the first features they list is bold new graphics. 

How sad is that? Bold new graphics are what you’d expect to read about a new Volkswagen or maybe the latest little import shoe-box car. But certainly not a race bike. Style over substance is the marquee indicator that the products are really all the same. Over time customers become conditioned to the sameness, accepting it without any consideration at all. From the market’s perspective there are many advantages to the sameness – widespread availability of product and parts, ubiquitous support, and much less thinking required in product decisions. How many motorcycle dealerships are now Honda/Yamaha/Suzuki/Kawasaki/KTM dealers, with real expertise in none of them?

There is also security. When every product is similar there is little chance of getting a lemon, and there is comfort in knowing that a million other people bought the same thing. We are soothed by this lack of risk, hypnotized by the flashy ads, and anesthetized by the monotonous tone of big companies telling us how smart we are.

But there is real risk in this apathy. We have ceded real control of our future to a handful of individuals who decide what is and is not important. Our interests are only addressed to the extent they align with the interests of the sellers. And this is not good.

Motorcycling is an individual pursuit. It’s an individual exercise. Yes, we are a community, but a community of individuals. Do we really want our future decided by someone else?