One Idiot’s Opinion of Erik Buell
In case you don’t listen to the podcast, I have my opinions of Buell as a man, a machine, and as a company. I can tell you that my respect for them is held in that order.
When I first laid eyes on a Buell it was via the pages of a technical manual and some sales brochures. Later I would be invited to a Harley-Davidson dealer’s meeting, which was mind-blowing.
My co-workers disappeared, hanging around the FLHTCUs (the Ultra Limited hadn’t come out yet) and all of the other eye candy of the time (H-D still offered Springers, and the Dynas were usually not sold without $10,000 of extra parts and accessories).
I on the other hand, migrated to the Buells. I found them to be beautiful and unconventional. One of my co-workers had an X1 Lightning that was more Ducati than latter-day XB Buells. It sported the last year of the trellis-style frame, and it’s USD forks told me that I was not looking at a typical Harley. In fact, the ear-splitting exhaust that roared as he left the parking lot everyday even betrayed it’s V-Twin heritage.
How could Buell fail with such a profitable brand backing him? How could they close the doors on him right after he released the Helicon-powered 1125R? I’ll never forget Danny Eslick taking home the 2009 AMA championship on his black/white/gold bike at NJMP, only to have Harley-Davidson immediately slam the door on Buell for good. If it hadn’t been for Larry Pegram, that probably would have been the last year that I watched American Road Racing.
Buell piqued my interest and kept me engaged because to me, he was like America’s John Britten. His ZTL brakes and fuel-in-frame design were mind blowing. His whole focus of mass centralization led to the XB12Scg-where ‘cg’ stood for ‘Center of Gravity’.
So, again, how could this happen to Buell? And why, with the help of East-asia’s biggest manufacturer, couldn’t he get back up?
In short, Buell is a racer, not a manufacturer. Racers use up all the money that manufacturers toil away to earn. Why then do brands like Honda and Suzuki make race vehicles? Well, they also make automobiles, and even if they didn’t, they’ve been at it a long time. Almost every OEM that is still in existence today started out earnestly and got into racing later in its development. Development is the key word here, as now most brands justify racing as a means of raising money and testing components for their street versions.
Erik Buell, on the other hand, has always been a racer struggling to get the general public interested in buying his niche bikes so that he can continue to make them for racing.
He started out as a racer who wanted to build better bikes, and to this day he is a racer who wants to build better bikes, The only problem is that first, you have to find an audience to buy your bikes. That’s how you make money. Which is required for racing.
-Cheers