Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/262687
INTERVIEW ERIK BUELL P72 The Munjals control 52.25 per- cent equity in the newly rebrand- ed Hero MotoCorp (after buying Honda's 26 percent share), and are now free of previous restric- tions. Hero has already grown its overseas presence to a dozen countries, although currently just 2.5 percent of its overall six mil- lion sales are outside India. How- ever, aided by the global expo- sure that its participation in World Superbike racing with EBR will deliver, Hero is slated to enter a total of 30 countries in the next four years – including the U.S. By that time 10 percent of its sales are projected be outside India, amounting to one million units, with its annual volume expected to reach 10 million units by then. Hero's Managing Director/ CEO Pawan Munjal has said that by 2020 his company will sell its products in more than 50 coun- tries worldwide, by which time its annual production capacity should reach 12 million units a year, manufactured in over 20 factories of which more than half will be outside India. So the arrival of Team Hero EBR on the World Superbike stage is an event whose signifi- cance goes way beyond racing – as, indeed, does Hero's decision revealed on July 1 this year to purchase a 49.2 percent stake in EBR for a reported $25 million. This came after the Indian gi- ant had sponsored the two-rider EBR team in the AMA Superbike series for the 2012-13 seasons, and after the two companies had already successfully teamed up to begin redressing Hero's lack of in-house engineering capabil- ity in the wake of its divorce from Honda. Honda had essentially been re- sponsible for the creation of new models, leaving its Indian part- ners to adapt them to manufac- ture, make them, and sell them. The acclaimed Hero Leap serial hybrid scooter was entirely con- ceived and developed by EBR, which has now taken over all of the former 54,000-square foot Buell Motorcycles factory in East Troy, Wisconsin. There, Buell's new company has developed two very differ- ent powered two-wheelers in the mass transportation sector with the Leap as the first fruit of this new focus. Here's our interview with Buell, prior to him heading off to India for the Expo, where we talked to him about how his highly signifi- cant alliance with Hero MotoCorp came about, and he also threw a spotlight on his future strategy for the EBR brand. In October 2009 Harley- Davidson shut down Buell. We visited you here six months af- ter that, soon after you found- ed EBR, and you had five or six people working with you in a tiny corner of this former Buell plant. Things have changed a bit since then, so how did this