buell

Founded by Eric Buell in 1983 at Wisconsin, the Buell Motorcycle Company has come a long way since its inception. The company had announced it 100000^th motorcycle in November 2006. Eric Buell worked as an engineer with the Harley-Davidson motor company and decided to go rebel and form his own motorcycle manufacturing company- thus giving birth to Buell. The first official partnership between Harley-Davidson and Buell took place in the year 1993 and this partnership strengthened over the years to come till, in 2003, Buell became a wholly owned subsidiary of Harley-Davidson. In 2009, Harley-Davidson announced that they would not be producing any motorcycles from the Buell lineage anymore and this was seen as an attempt on Harley's part to streamline its own operations. Later that year, Buell and Harley-Davidson made a combined announcement, launching Eric Buell Racing- an independent company run more or less by the original team at Buell. This new company has been entitled to produce only the racing versions of the popular 1125R model.

Buell has always been a race-centric motorcycle manufacturer and the first Buell was built primarily for the purpose of competing in the AMA Formula 1 championship. The bike was called RW750 and Eric Buell was a leading race driver at that point in time. After a couple of years the formula 1 championship was canceled and Buell shifted focus towards street bikes. The main theme of Buell bikes has always been racing and the engines used were those that were manufactured by Harley-Davidson.

In 1993, Harley-Davidson had brought a 49% stake in the company, which extended to a majority stake in the years to come. Ever since the takeover of Buell in 1998, Buell has been using tweaked Sportster engines to power its bikes.

The engines were four stroke, V-Twins and were air cooled initially. The engines underwent a series of changes and with the depletion of the original sportster 1200 cc engines, Buell started engineering their own engines. It was in late 2009 that Harley-Davidson announced the stoppage in production of Buell bikes. Harley-Davidson did not want to dilute their own brand image and the dealers were somewhat reluctant to sell anything but a Harley. Eric Buell strategically looked out for buyers after this was announced and found Bombradier for the 1125 cc engine contract. All these events led to the formation of the Eric Buell Racing Company, as we know it today. This company lays focus on the 1125cc model and has limited its operations only to the racing track as of now.