VOL. 51 ISSUE 7 FEBRUARY 19, 2014 P71
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEL EDGE
W
hen the 2014 World Super-
bike Championship kicks off at
Phillip Island on February 23,
among the eight different manufactur-
ers represented on the grid will be an
all-new, all-American one – EBR. As
such, its debut will represent a per-
sonal milestone for company founder
Erik Buell, who created EBR/Erik
Buell Racing from the ashes of the
Buell Motorcycle Company after Har-
ley-Davidson shut it down in October
2009 and whose personal goal of go-
ing Superbike racing at the highest
level will finally be achieved.
But the existence of Team Hero
EBR – as the team will be formally
known – also comprises a key step in
the repositioning and restructuring of
its primary sponsor, India's Hero Mo-
toCorp. The world's largest pure mo-
torcycle manufacturer (so, for exam-
ple, no cars as well, unlike Suzuki and
Honda), Hero's annual sales of six mil-
lion powered two-wheelers has until
now been exclusively concentrated in
India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka –
and Colombia, in South America.
Until now it could not sell its prod-
ucts in the 150 other countries around
the world where its then-partner Hon-
da was already a significant player, as
a condition of the contract with the
Japanese giant in 1984 that brought
the Munjals, the family behind Indian
bicycle giant Hero Cycles, into mo-
torized two-wheelers to create Hero
Honda. This joint venture dominated
the world's second largest motorcycle
market for a quarter of a century, until
Honda filed for divorce in December
2010.
