What Happens When the Gold Rush Ends? The Powersports Market After the Pandemic Boom

Arnold Tijerina wrote the original version of this post in November 2022, while units were still selling as fast as they arrived. His warning was blunt. Many dealers, he wrote, "have gotten lazy in mining their own databases for business, quite frankly. It has been so easy to sell the inventory that they have, and many have taken it for granted." His question for them was just as short: "If you know it’s going to end, why would you not prepare for that?"

Nearly four years on, we can answer the question in the title with published numbers rather than guesses. This update, written for dealer principals and sales managers, looks at what happened to the powersports market after the pandemic boom, using manufacturer annual reports and Federal Reserve data, and then at what a store does about it.

What the 2022 warning said

The original post made three points:

1. Easy sales hid weak habits. With scarce inventory and steady walk-in demand, many stores stopped marketing to their own customers.
2. The rush would end once every dealer had inventory again, and the stores that had stopped working their database would feel it first.
3. The database is the safety net. In his words: "You don’t just have a CRM-you have a marketing database with that CRM."

The rest of this article checks the first two points against what happened, and turns the third into a plan.

What actually happened after the boom

The boom did not end with empty showrooms. It ended with full ones. Supply caught up at the same time as borrowing got more expensive, and manufacturers then spent more on promotions to move units.

The table below uses two primary sources: Polaris's annual reports, because a large OEM reports dealer inventory and retail trends every year, and the Federal Reserve's record of its target rate. Polaris is one manufacturer, so treat its numbers as one clear view of the market, not the whole industry.

Three things stand out.

Inventory came back faster than buyers did. In 2023 Polaris reported its North America ORV retail up mid-single digits, while dealer inventories of the same products rose about 55 percent. Polaris also reported that its income from financial services rose 66 percent in 2023, "driven by higher dealer inventory levels," and that interest expense rose "due to higher interest rates." More units were sitting on dealer lots, and carrying them cost more.

Then the industry spent to clear them. By the end of 2025 Polaris reported its dealer inventories lower than a year earlier, but it also said its 2025 sales reflected "lower net pricing driven by higher promotional costs," and gave the same reason for the lower average price in its off-road segment. Bringing inventory down took incentives.

Demand split by category. Polaris's 2025 report shows utility vehicles growing while recreational units fell. In 2023 its estimate for the North American 900cc cruiser, touring and standard motorcycle market was down high-single digits, and its 2025 report said the same. A store that sells mostly recreational and on-road units felt the end of the rush harder than one with a strong utility or work-vehicle base.

The Fed table matters for two reasons. Many powersports buyers finance, so the payment they see follows rates. And floor plan interest on every unit you have not sold follows rates too.

What it meant on the showroom floor

Put the sources together and the end of the gold rush looked like this for a typical store:

• More units on the lot, some of them aging, each one carrying floor plan interest.
• Shoppers comparing payments, not just prices, as rates rose.
• More manufacturer programs and dealer discounts competing for the same buyer.
• Fewer walk-ins who arrived ready to buy, so the store had to go and find them.

That last point is exactly the one the original post made. The stores that had kept a clean customer database and kept talking to their owners had somewhere to go. The ones that had relied on demand walking in had to rebuild the habit under pressure. Our guide to marketing a dealership in an economic downturn covers the budget side of that shift.

The signs of the boom hangover in your own numbers

The market reports tell you what happened to the industry. None of the top search results tells you how to see it in your own store. These are the checks we suggest, and where to find each number.

If the last three numbers are poor, the problem is not the market. It is the habit the original post warned about.

What a dealer does about it

There are four jobs. Each has a fuller guide on this site, so this section sets out the order and links to the detail.

1. Work the database

Your past buyers, service customers and unsold shoppers are the cheapest audience you will ever market to. Start with owners who have probably built equity in their unit: our guide to database equity mining shows how to find them from your own records. Then plan the year: a database marketing strategy splits the list into a few segments and gives each program an owner and a holdout group, so you know what it actually added.

2. Keep the service customer

When unit sales slow, the service lane is where you keep the relationship. Every service visit is a chance to update the customer record, note the unit's age and condition, and learn whether an upgrade is on the customer's mind. For owners who have drifted away, our guide to winning back lost dealership customers covers how to find out why they left before you call.

3. Clear aged inventory on a plan

Aged units do not get cheaper to hold. Work each one in a set order: find out why it is not selling, re-merchandise it, reprice in planned steps, bundle before cutting deeper, and re-engage past shoppers. Our playbook for selling aged powersports inventory has a decision table by age band and worked examples.

4. Keep promotions disciplined

Promotions are where the end of the boom shows up most clearly in the OEM reports. They work, but they can also teach customers to wait for the next one. A few rules help:

• Price every program before you advertise it: know the gross on the deal after the rebate, the dealer cash and any finance support.
• Put promotions on the units and categories that need them, not on the whole lot.
• Give each promotion an end date and keep it.
• Track the share of deals with a promotion each month. If it keeps rising while gross falls, you are buying volume.
• Advertise prices and payment offers accurately. Rules on advertising credit terms and prices vary, so check yours with whoever handles compliance. This is general information, not legal advice.

A 90-day plan for when the rush is over

1. Run the seven checks in the table above and write the results on one page.
2. Clean the customer database: merge duplicates, fix missing phone numbers and email addresses, and remove contacts who have opted out.
3. Pull three lists: owners likely to have equity, service customers with no sales contact in 12 months, and unsold shoppers from the last six months.
4. Give each list one owner and one message that fits it, then measure appointments and sales, not opens. Our guide to data-driven dealership marketing shows how to tie a sale back to its source.
5. Set an aging plan for every unit past 60 days, with a date for each next price or merchandising step.
6. Review every running promotion against the gross it leaves on the deal.
7. Check your channel mix against cost per sale. Our comparison of powersports marketing channels lists what each one is good for.
8. Close out dead leads properly instead of carrying them forever. Our companion piece on knowing when to mark a lead lost covers that decision.
9. Write the routines down so they survive a busy month. Our batch companion on dealership best practices is a useful starting point.
10. Repeat the seven checks after 90 days and compare.

Where PSX Ascend fits

Everything above runs on the customer record. The PSX Ascend AI-powered CRM connects customer data, sales workflows and lead follow-up in one operating view, and AMP, PSX Ascend's marketing automation, uses customer stage, inventory interest and behavior to shape communication instead of sending the same message to everyone. PSX describes AMP as a managed service with campaign setup, proven email templates and monitored touchpoints. On the inventory side, PSX Ascend's inventory management shows which units are fresh, gaining attention, or need a pricing and merchandising decision.

When fewer buyers walk in, none of the ones who do should be lost. In the follow-up model PSX promotes, salespeople work each new lead with quick touches and leave accurate notes and dispositions, managers are prompted to review stalled deals, and then ALMA, the Automated Lead Management Assistant, takes on the repetitive work of re-engaging stalled prospects to bring them back to a live conversation with a person. The aim is to close deals, not chase them.

You can also see the same AI-powered powersports CRM on our sister site, PSXDigital's AI-powered powersports CRM page.

Sources

• Polaris Inc., 2023 Annual Report and Form 10-K (dealer inventory, retail and financial services commentary for 2023)
• Polaris Inc., 2025 Annual Report and Form 10-K (end-market, dealer inventory and promotional cost commentary for 2025)
• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Open Market Operations: FOMC target federal funds rate or range, changes and levels