IMS Outdoors has announced that its 2022 tour has been canceled. Last year, the International Motorcycle Shows changed format and rebranded itself as IMS Outdoors, moving from a series of indoor shows held during the winter months to an outdoor powersports festival format during the summer and fall. There were eight shows held at cities around the U.S. between June and November 2021.
Read our 2021 IMS Outdoors show report
The following announcement was sent out by IMS Outdoors on Monday, May 9, 2022:
Dear IMS Fans,
We have some news to share today with our IMS Family. After 40 years of producing The International Motorcycle Shows and IMS Outdoors, we have made the difficult decision to suspend the IMS Tour in 2022.
The powersports industry is at a crossroads with where and how brands promote their products amidst the continued manufacturing and sourcing delays associated with the pandemic. These current hurdles that our brand partners are facing would have made it difficult for us to produce an IMS that would meet your, and our, expectations. Therefore, we will not be moving forward with the planned 2022 events, including the Ultimate Builder Custom Bike Show.
Any tickets purchased or Ultimate Builder Custom Bike Show registrations paid for 2022 events will be refunded to the credit card used for purchase within 7 business days. If you have not received your refund within 7 business days, please contact service@tixonlinenow.com.
We greatly appreciate your attendance and loyalty over the years and will miss sharing your love for motorcycling with you.
Following the announcement, we received the following quote from Tracy Harris, SVP of IMS Outdoors:
“We could not be more thankful for the IMS community and the continued support each and every one of you have shown over the past 40 years. Collectively, we brought the love of two wheels to so many cities across the nation – while suspending the IMS tour for the foreseeable future was a difficult decision, we believe in the resiliency of this industry and look forward to watching the powersports industry grow and evolve.”
Apart from dirt and super high end bikes, what would they show? Bikes that don’t exist/you can’t buy like the Suzuki GSX-1000gt, the Kawasaki Ninja1000sx, the KTM Super Duke GT, and so on. It’s frustrating enough when bikes are reviewed but don’t exist at dealers.
Well, Aprilia (Piaggio) has finally shipped USA dealers “Showroom Demo Only” versions of their new Tuareg 660. So you can touch and look at one at least. I have one on order, but my dealer advises me to think in terms of months rather than days or weeks whenever I ask about when I will get my bike. I now wonder if my bike will ship with all of the options I ordered? (i.e. most of the Tuaregs for the USA press fleet demos were missing the quick-shifter option).
Come on, it’s an Italian bike. They haven’t shipped bikes on time for 50 years! And if you need parts six months is the norm. Covid, Smovid, doesn’t matter. This is business as usual in Italy!
Right now I have all the bikes I need or want, so I haven’t been looking for a new bike and I’m not aware that dealers still don’t have bikes for sale on the floor. Is that true? I look on Cycle Trader and see plenty of new bikes at dealers being advertised. My BMW dealer seems to have plenty of bikes on the floor, and I bought a new Harley last summer. I think that the IMS cancellation is more a matter of the manufacturers realizing that they weren’t getting a good return on investment for all the money they would spend on the IMS circuit. Same probably goes for accessory companies. Blame the Internet, I suppose.