It was early afternoon on a Thursday in Las Vegas when a fire broke out at a local powersports dealership. It's a mega-large place, the kind that sells both new and used motorcycles from multiple brands, as well as ATVs and UTVs.
The place where the fire happened was in back of the RideNow Powersports location, near Boulder Highway and Russell Road. It's not clear exactly which motorcycles were affected, but you can clearly see crates of motorcycles out back, as well as a few charred husks of badly burned side-by-sides that were also damaged in the incident.
According to local news reports, it took about an hour for multiple Clark County Fire Department crews to successfully put the fire out. Passersby reported hearing loud bangs, as you'll see a few very animated folks relate in this video from a local news outlet.
How many motorcycles were damaged? It's believed that somewhere between 55 and 70 motorcycles were damaged, likely amounting to a quarter of a million dollars or more. It's not clear how many side-by-sides were damaged at this point, but as I noted, you can clearly see them in this footage. They are not mentioned in writing in any of the local news reports.
Investigators are working to trace what caused this fire, but have not released details at this point. The news video above seems to have immediately jumped to the conclusion that a nearby homeless encampment is involved, though it doesn't offer much in the way of evidence.
I've never shopped with this dealership, but you can find multiple folks on Reddit who claim to have had less-than-stellar experiences with them. A particular one that sticks out can be found in r/RZR, where someone posted a screenshot of a truly outrageous quote from RideNow for a base model 2024 Polaris XP4 1000. Could a disgruntled customer have been involved? That's unclear, but we can say they're out there.
As the new riding season gets underway, have fun, stay safe, and try not to spontaneously combust while you're parked at a dealership in 2025.
