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 P78 a few years off! That presupposes a range of Buell models, of which 1190RX is just the first. What other models have you got coming? Fundamentally, we're work- ing on several other derivatives of that platform that I can't really talk about, but one of them is not far away, and that's the 1190SX which will be the Streetfighter version. Then we'll have the AX next, which is the adventure tourer coming a year or so from now, but there will be others. We have a whole range of bikes that we're working on, but to actually get a motorcycle into production takes a while. It's only been four years since Buell was shut down and I founded EBR, and there's lots of things you have to do to put a bike into production. You have to design it, test it, finance it, productionize it, validate it - it all just takes time. But we're get- ting there. Is EBR able to develop the entire package of a new Hero product - including the engine, or does the motor have to be developed elsewhere for you? We can develop the entire bike, with one or more cylinders – and we're doing just that. Buell was formerly the sportbike spinoff of Harley- Davidson, which meant that you had to make a sportbike that Harley felt comfortable with. Harley's just launched a new 500cc V-Twin cruiser that'll be built in India. So now are we going to see a switch- hit? Is Erik Buell's EBR, going to develop a cruiser model for the Indian and other markets which would compete with Harley's new mini-cruiser? I promised Harley I won't tread on their toes, and I won't - there won't ever be any EBR branded ethos to motorcycles. It's just a different segment, and a different customer than Harley, or Indian - and we intend to succeed in carving that very separate iden- tity for our products, compared to anything made in Europe or Japan, let alone the USA. What are your ultimate plans for EBR? What direction do you see it heading in? It might be interesting to go pub- lic. There are some advantages to doing that, and some disadvan- tages, too. It obviously gives you a pool of money to grow the busi- ness with if you float the company on the stock market. I think that if we show a trend of success, people will like the company and want to invest in it, and we can show that we've made good use of the money that's already been invested in us so far, which makes us pretty attractive. So I'd like to go public. Some folks say that they don't like having other peo- ple messing with their business, but I don't think that that's true. Harley had their issues with that, and they went quite a way down but then came back up again. We love motorcycles, but at the end of the day, it's a business – and to be successful in the motorcycle busi- ness, you have to be a business- man. To be a good businessman, you have to make money. And there's nothing wrong with making money, especially when you make it the old fashioned way - which is working your butt off, and earning it. And that's what we're doing at EBR… CN cruisers. It's not my kind of bike, and Harley does that very well, anyway. What we felt was that there was this gigantic gap in sportbikes, and that's what we're addressing. I love to see Harley succeeding again, and even In- dian coming in with a new prod- uct - that's all great. But there's just a whole different side of America to that, the youthful, young, innovative mindset that you see with companies like Apple and suchlike in the con- sumer electronics sector, and we wanted to apply that kind of " THERE WILL BE SEPARATE NETWORKS, BUT THE MORE DEALERS WHO CAN TAKE BOTH TOGETHER, THE EASIER IT'LL BE. " -ERIK BUELL