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The debut of the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 was the headline event from 2021 - with the Bar & Shield brand offering its first motorcycle that truly deviated from the company's cruiser lineup.

An integral part of Harley-Davidson's "Hardwire" plan to restructure the company for the future, the Pan America 1250 is a conquest bike for the American bike-maker, with an eye on scooping up some sales from rival European brands.

Was it a success? That depends on whom you ask. American publications certainly seemed to think so, with the Pan America 1250 taking top honors in several of their shootouts last year. Meanwhile, the European press was less-enthused.

We will let you decide if home-team bias, on both sides of the pond, are at play there. For our money, we'd put the Ducati Multistrada V4 S in our garage before the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250, but reasonable minds can easily disagree on this thought.

Shootouts don't balance the account's books however, and for the bean-counters, the true measure of a motorcycle's success is on the showroom floor.

To that end, Harley-Davidson sold just over 2,500 units of its Pan America lineup in the USA last year, according to our Bothan spies.

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The house of brands under KTM’s management had a very, very good year in 2021, with their parent company Pierer Mobility reporting a 23% increase in motorcycle sales over 2020’s dismal figures.

The preliminary report doesn’t break-out sales by each motorcycle brand (KTM, Husqvarna, & GasGas), but it does separate out the firm’s bicycle and e-bike figures, which have been used in the past to buoy the marketing team’s efforts.

As such, we can rest assured that today’s announcement and positive progress is real, and not the spin we were getting in 2020, which saw the Austrian outfit taking a first-time dip in sales results in the past decade.

Ducati is the first OEM to brag about its 2021 sales results, and it is quite the brag from the Italian brand – with 59,447 units sold last year.

That sum is an all-time record for Ducati Motor Holding, and marks a 12% gain over the total sales from 2019, and a 24% gain over 2020’s results.

Helping take Ducati to that level was double-digit growth in all of the motorcycle-maker’s key markets, including the United States, where sales were up a staggering 33.5%.

That growth was surely fueled by the Ducati Multistrada V4 adventure bike, which accounted for nearly 1 in 5 Ducati’s sold in 2021.

Last year was a difficult year for the motorcycle industry, due primarily to the regional lockdowns, production stoppages, and disrupted supply chains.

The effect has been a loss in motorcycle sales across the board, and KTM is no different from the bulk of the two-wheeled brands.

Reporting a drop of 3.4% in motorcycle units sales, KTM ended last year selling 270,047 motorcycles worldwide (compared to 280,099 units in 2019).

It was strange to see another press release from Ducati Motor Holding about the 2020 sales year - you would think that the Italian brand would like to forget about the 9.7% sales drop it reported for last year.

Like virtually every other motorcycle brand in the industry, last year was tough on unit sales, though there were some very promising trends later in the season. As such, everyone is trying to spin the events and put their best foot forward - Ducati included.

So while it is at least strange to see the Bologna brand touting its cash flow results for 2020, one can at least understand why they are doing so.

What is more interesting though are some of the tidbits Ducati released in the process, which shows an insight into the company's operations and trends.

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Hidden by talk of the Harley-Davidson “Hardwire” business plan, which seems like more business speak than actual business substance, we also have the American brand’s Q4 results from last year, as well as the yearly sales results from 2020.

If you need a two-word summary of those sales results, we will provide you with a “not good” response.

Harley-Davidson finished the year down 17.4% compared to the sales numbers of 2019, with Q4 2020 showing a 14% drop over the same time period last year.

By all fair accounts, BMW Motorrad’s sales drop in 2020 (the first in nine years) should still be considered a positive result considering the circumstances, though perhaps not quite the extent that BMW’s press release would lead you to believe.

This is because the German brand is busy spinning its 2020 motorcycle sales figures with a full-court press, including the caveat that 2020 was the second-best sales result in BMW Motorrad’s history (which they are), though the success of BMW Motorrad varies greatly by region.

As we saw with the Ducati Motor Holding’s sales report from earlier today, 2020 was an obviously tough year for the motorcycle industry, and that trend continues with the BMW Motorrad’s results for the year.

In its preliminary report on the BMW Group’s annual sales, the German brand quotes that it sold 169,272 motorcycles and scooters to customers in 2020.

Despite BMW Motorrad spinning this as its second-best sales year ever, this number of bikes sold is a 3.4% drop compared to 2019’s sales volume, and it is the first time in nine years that sales for BMW Motorrad have not grown.

The beancounters are working hard to close the books on 2020, which means we are starting to see our first reports on the total economic situation from last year.

With factory closures, disrupted supply chains, and stay-at-home orders featuring heavily in the first-half of the year, the coronavirus decimated motorcycle sales worldwide.

Then, the second-half of the year saw a huge bump in two-wheel interest, buoyed by economic relief efforts, delayed sales trends, and a renewed interest in the ultimate social-distancing machine.

This makes for a grab bag of perspectives when it comes to motorcycles sales, and nothing could be more true than what Ducati Motor Holding is reporting today.

The yearly results for Harley-Davidson are out, and once again they paint a dark figure for the iconic American motorcycle brand, as its total worldwide sales collapsed like a dying star, with a decline of 4.3% to bring the company to a  total of 218,273 units sold worldwide.

Things were worse in the domestic market, with Harley-Davidson’s sales in the USA showing a 5.2% drop (125,960 units) from 2018’s figures.

This leaves the Bar & Shield brand’s international sales down an even 3% (92,313 units) – for those doing the math.