Motorcycling through Europe...
 

Here's the scenario. A friend and myself are travelling to Europe May 2005. I've never been and he has seen Italy once before. My intention is to fly over and buy a motorcycle. Neither one of us have any time constraints, merely going for the experience. If someone knows the cheapest place in Europe to buy a motorcycle, we'd probably fly out there to start our "adventure". If anyone has any info on where to buy, or someone that has done this before....we're both looking for the pros and cons of the trip. I'm new to this and know fairly little about Europe so I'll be posting often. Thanks for your help. If you need more info, I'll gladly give it to you.

You may need to investigate whether your license will be good there for a purchased bike. France has incredible requirements for licenses for motorcycles. There's always BMW in Munich.

You also need to see how affordable the mandatory insurance coverage will be as I understand this is why few agencies rent motorcyles but prefer to enter sell and buy back agreements. Anyway this a great way to get off the beaten track and you'll find many motorcyclists in Europe, much more than in the US it seems.

Thank you, I was not aware of the buy back option....I'lll certainly look into it. It was looking pretty expensive to ship the bike back.

Hi CB,

Friends tell me that you can buy a used bike from a fellow tourist and then sell it to another tourist when it is time to go home.

It has been done by different folks in Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris and Berlin.

Hang out around the AMEX office.

My thoughts are:

Look for bike shops in England with websites.
Email regarding buying a well used bike that has been reconditioned as well as licensing and insurance.
Ask about buyback.
Expect to loose less than the cost of shipping.

rand '85 FZ750 with 68K