With Memorial Day behind us, the summer driving season is officially underway. You probably heard that AAA estimated a decrease in motor traffic over the holiday weekend for the first time since 2002. But even if gas prices, which climbed another four cents while you were reading the last sentence, are finally beginning to impact leisure travel, millions of Americans who cannot cut back on driving to and from work are being forced to either absorb the high prices or find more creative ways of cutting consumption.

Some people have tried cutting out driving altogether, but most are turning to more fuel-efficient vehicles, including new hybrid models, decade-old Geo Metros and, increasingly, motor scooters with triple-digit MPGs. But heavyweight motorcycles, which still get two to three times the gas mileage of a typical sedan, aren’t enjoying the same sales bump, so one would expect there to be less interest in the heavyweights on the web. Au contraire!

Traffic to motorcycle companies’ websites typically increases through the first few months of a calendar year as weather improves, starting around February’s Bike Week in Daytona Beach and going right through the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally in D.C. during Memorial Day weekend. The pattern certainly holds true this year, but what’s interesting about this graph is that most of the companies shown, despite being major scooter producers, had fewer visitors to their sites in April 2008 than in the same month in 2007. In fact, only Honda Powersports and Harley-Davidson posted year-over-year increases in traffic. Harley’s 22% rise in traffic is particularly impressive because of its premium-brand status and its absence from the bustling small-scooter market.

Harley-Davidson also leads the pack in keeping visitors on its site. The average stay per visit was just over 10 minutes for Harley-Davidson in April, 25% higher than its closest competitor, Kawasaki. So interest in the Harley brand is obviously still present, but that interest isn’t being converted to sales. (Harley-Davidson sales for Q1 2008 were down 5.6% compared to Q1 2007 and down 12.8% from Q4 2007.) With fuel efficiency on consumers’ minds and difficult economic conditions around for the immediate future, could Harley begin to position itself as a practical vehicle and still maintain its high-end brand image? Would Americans who are in market for a new vehicle buy into the idea that the hog they’ve always wanted is an increasingly sensible purchase? What do you think?

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