Remember Buell?
The past, present and future of Buell Motorcycles
John Newman
It's a complex saga, the one of Buell motorcycles and its creator Erik Buell.
At one time they threw their lot in with Harley Davidson. A seemingly good move as they could plug into an already existing dealer network. But this didn't work out for either party and now Harley is struggling with layoffs at several of its US factories.
Last year Buell went into liquidation and was managed by a company call Liquid Asset Partners (LAP). It looked to be the end of the story for the company, which, everyone assumed, would be stripped of its assets. But Erik is a die hard bike engineer and ex-racer. And along with LAP, he's revived production of a limited bike range and is also involved in running a superbike race team. Its principle rider, a young woman named Shelina Moreda, is keeping their bike at the front of the race field.
At last year's Motorcycle Live (19th - 27th November 2015, NEC Birmingham) Erik Buell Racing (EBR) had appointed a UK agent and several good looking bikes were on display. According to its website,
www.erikbuellracing.com, it'll be producing bikes for 2017. It will be interesting to see if they're is still around.
Comments
07/10/16 - Great bikes until they go wrong and they do often.
08/10/16 - Going on 43,000 miles on my 2005 xb9sx, just replaced the original battery with a Motobatt from Wemoto.
08/10/16 - Who?
08/10/16 - Worst move EB ever made in his life was trusting HD
08/10/16 - I've owned mine since new in '99. Such a fun bike I can't part with it. I've owned a couple of other V twins since which come and go
09/10/16 - I think anything about motorbikes are fantastic who agrees?
09/10/16 - Had fun on mine, two failures could have killed me, wheel bearing exploding at 70ish and oil cooler pipe fail on outside lane, covered the bike and back wheel in oil. And numerous electrical problems. Such a shame, it was a Uly and a touring bike, couldn't trust 25 miles touring in the end
09/10/16 - I've owned four and if anything were to happen to my current two Buells I can't think of another bike to replace them, I'd be in the classifieds looking for another Buell
09/10/16 - X1 was the one to have and I still do
EN