Much of the future for new motorcycles will be driven by the large demand for small, cheap and economical transport within the developing world. A market-leading company in this area is China's Hongdou which makes a version of Honda's CG125 and has already broken into a number of maturing markets.

For many people, motorcycle taxis have developed into the world's limousines. Scooters, mopeds and motorcycles offer a fast, cheap and albeit risky way around snarled traffic and scarce public transit. This is all a long way from the fun and glamour of the open road but it is the new reality.

Economy will continue to be a driving factor and when Honda launched its CG 150 Titan Mix ethanol flex fuel, actually the first such engine in the world, into the Brazilian market in early 2009, it captured 10% of the market share within nine months.

Honda followed up in September 2009 with a second flexible-fuel bike and by December 2010 had shipped over 500,000 units representing nearly 20% of the market share.

Latest figures published for June 2011 show that flexible-fuel motorcycles had passed the important one million unit milestone.