INTERVIEW
ERIK BUELL
P76
nents entirely by ourselves, and
assembling them here in East
Troy. Rotax makes no contribu-
tion whatsoever to their manu-
facture. They actually only ever
made three parts on that en-
tire engine - they machined the
crankcases from raw castings
that they brought in from a suppli-
er, they machined the crankshaft
out of forgings they had bought,
and they machined the cylinder
heads out of castings that they
bought. Everything else came ful-
ly machined from an outside sup-
ply source, ready for assembly by
Rotax, who did nothing else than
that. I basically just had to re-
source those three components
that Rotax had made, and either
work directly with their suppliers
for the parts they brought in, or
source my own. So the 1190 is a
100 percent EBR engine, and it's
not just a bored out 1125 - in fact
it has around 140 different parts.
The cylinder head castings are
different to the ones on the old
engine, so it's not just machined
differently, but it's a whole new
casting. The cams are different,
the rods, crank, pistons, every-
thing...
Team Hero EBR is now go-
ing to race in the 2014 World
Superbike championship rac-
ing with this motorcycle. Why?
We're on our way to becom-
ing a global company, and so
is Hero, which was not allowed
under the terms of its previous
Hero Honda joint venture to ex-
port its products outside of the
sub-continent. But now they have
to build Hero as a global brand,
and our World Superbike partici-
pation will help with that. One of
their concerns is, we're number
one in India and we have great
products, but how do we get
the brand known outside India -
and even there, how do we get
people talking about Hero, rather
than just having us bring a new
product to the marketplace, and
have our dealers sell the wheels
off it? Let's get the marketplace
The Buell RX1190 Superbike.
