agingrebel.com
The most recent incarnation of Erik
Buell’s motorcycle company has been knocked down again. If this was
boxing the referee would stop it.
But this is sport bikes, not a fight.
All that is at stake is money, not blood and brain cells. And somebody
out there who loves the idea of an American sport bike and who has a few
million dollars burning a hole in his pocket might think Buell still
has at least a puncher’s chance.
Erik Buell Racing, of East Troy, announced last Thursday that it was shutting down but it still hasn’t thrown in the towel.
Headwinds
“This difficult decision was based
primarily on EBR facing significant headwinds with signing new dealers,
which is key to sales and growth for a new company,” a press release
said. “In addition, EBR has had limited production in 2016 and 2017 that
was under goal. The combination of slow sales and industry
announcements of other major OEM brands closing or cutting production
only magnified the challenges faced by EBR.”
“EBR will continue to review strategic alternatives with interested investors regarding production operations.”
If the company is to be rescued, it
better happen soon. “A sale of production equipment and excess parts
will start in March,” the release said. In the meantime, EBR promises,
the company will continue to honor warranties and provide support to its
17 dealers and their customers.
Long Prologue
Erik Buell has been the preeminent
American sport bike designer for the last 35 years. He started his
career at Harley-Davidson and founded Buell Motorcycle Company in 1983. A
decade later, Harley bought just less than half of Buell. In 2003 Buell
became a Harley subsidiary. The company dumped the sport bike line in
October 2009. Buell built about 137,000 motorcycles – a little less than
5,300 bikes a year – during the 26 years of its existence.
Erik Buell started EBR a month after
Harley discontinued the motorcycle that wore his name. EBR became the
anti-Harley: Its motorcycles were technologically advanced rather than
nostalgic. The machine was the show, not the image. But the new Buell’s
were too expensive to get much of a foothold in the sport bike market.
Buell closed his factory in April 2015. A
year ago a company called Liquid Asset Partners bought the
manufacturing assets and restarted production with the idea of building
motorcycles while the new owners tried to sell the company.
In September 2016, EBR announced “Our
dealers have had nice success selling bikes this summer and we have many
new ones coming on. Our quality is continuously improving, our supplier
relationships established, and now we are looking towards the future.
This fall, we have something ‘Quick, Dark, and Low’ in the works that
should be exciting for urban street riders, and we are making real
progress on expanding the range of models of the 1190 platform, as well
as developing and delivering accessories that our EBR riders want. There
is a bright future for EBR, and as part of that, work is proceeding on a
sub-$10k platform for 2018.”
The company’s current model, the 190RX USA cost $14,000 in white and yellow or $15,000 in black red or silver.
Erik Buell Racing has already survived
for about seven years longer than it should have. The dream of an
American supersport bike that could compete with Suzuki, Kawasaki and
Ducati probably just evaporated. But the dream won’t officially end
until sometime in March.