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Just what are Grey bikes?
Well they are bikes that are independently imported from overseas (often from Japan or USA), not through official importers. This often involves dealers having contacts overseas and shipping bikes over in containers.
Why bother, surely you can get the bikes from official franchised dealers?
Well, yes and no. Firstly there's two types of grey bikes. The standard grey bike is usually a used machine that has never been or is no longer imported. The second is Parallel Imports; these are currently being officially imported already, however these official machines can be up to £1500 dearer. Which suggests that just maybe the official franchises have over hyped prices? Thus causing considerable embarrassment for the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA).
But is anyone buying them?
Yes is the answer. Up to 25% of all new motorcycle registration in the UK was from grey bikes and as many as 60% of UK franchised dealers were also selling grey and/or parallel imports (stats. from Glass's Guide and Motion Promotion respectively).
What's the catch then?
That depends who you talk to. If you believe the MCIA then you will think that greys are non-standard and just not any good for many reasons, one being (unbelievably) that some don't have and 'E' stamped on parts of it. But the British Independent Motorcycle Importers Association (BIMIA) is doing a good job to put some confidence into a industry that has suffered unfair criticism. The main problem however is getting manuals and information about your bike, however the grey industry is getting it's act together and beginning to sort all this out (and shouldn't be such a problem to put you off).
The Grey Motorcycle Mecca site was set up on 7th October 1997
on a whim, when it was just a few lines of text. These pages were designed
in the following few days with the aim to raise awareness and hopefully get
together some info and links on these bikes.
This site was originally constructed with Microsoft Word 97 which made a complete
mess of the code and was a pain in the neck, this updated version (March 1998)
I have used mainly MS FrontPage 98 which is much better. I know I should
get around to coding it properly in HTML but I just haven't got the time.
I've also been meaning to put in some bike pictures but as I don't have a
scanner it'll have to wait until I can get the use of one (i've got one nopw
and pictures should be arriving soon!). GMM has been tested with Netscape
Navigator 3, 4.5 and MS Internet Explorer 3 (yuk) and should be ok in 640x480,
800x600 and 1024x768 and in 256 and hi-colour modes, although 1024x768 hi-colour
is recommended. I also became aware of a problem when running the old
site in 256 colours, sometimes one of the hi-colour backdrops made the text
unreadable, I've removed that backdrop.
Also if you are thinking that I have made a huge spelling mistake with 'Grey', that's how it's spelt here in the UK, not 'gray'. Also 'color' (and a few other words) have gained a 'u' making it 'colour'. - Don't worry, I'll stop going on about it now.
Site History - Major Updates to the site
May 2000 - Umm, well the previous one never actually got uploaded. So here it is. Watch out for a future major update as more time is now becoming available to do it! (Wow)
Feb 2000 - Ok, So it's been a year since the last one but it's a fairly major update, design wise anyway. More on the Feature Bikes. Frames have gone, blah, blah. Who reads this anyway?
Feb 1999 - Added the Featured bike section. It's a little basic at the moment but It should see the start of a change of this site from a set of links and rantings to something vaguely useful.
Greybike Magazine - For producing a great mag, giving inspiration and the information for the list of bikes on the help us page (and its advertisers).
GEOCITIES
When I started this website Geocities was a great place to host a website. However, now it's all gone sour. You'll have noticed while using this website (and others on Geocities) that you're getting windows popping up out of nowhere - Sorry, but this is beyond my control. The only way I can get rid of them is by inserting a 'Geoguide' . Which ever way I means that this site is less enjoyable bacause you have to waste your bandwidth downloading adverts. Neither can I do anything about the icon that floats over the page (on V4+ browsers). As a result of this GMM will be moving to a different location when I find one suitable.
