Buell Rumblings: Backers Planning Buyout?
20. Oct, 2009 
9 Comments
There are reports that a business group has asked Erik Buell to meet with them to help formulate an attempt at a takeover of the motorcycle company that bears his name. The group is based in the area of Wisconsin where the Buell facilities are located. The closing of the plant means a direct job loss to 170 people plus the trickle down effect to many more.
While this may have been a viable option before Harley-Davidson completely took over Buell it may be more difficult now. Experts say many of the components in the latest Buells are of Harley design and thus trademarked by Harley. The company certainly would resist a competing company from using their own trademarked parts in a competitors machine.
Hopefully something can be done to keep the Buell marque alive in the future.
photo: Bryan Carter
we were discussing this on tweeter yesterday. Most hopefull the backers of the community will have enough money to help Eric realize his dreams, build a better motorcycle…do more with racing, and have one hell of a great street MC too!
All of us feel Buell deserves better than the step-child treatment he got.
Agreed. Hate I missed the Tweets, I couldn’t sign in — got the whale. So next time, you all need to post comments here or on the blog. ;)
I would stand in line to help Eric and Co. retake the reins. Where do I sign ?
I’ve got to figure out how to do that….I think it would be great to get FB and Twitter talking, can that be done?
I know there are 3rd party apps that do it. I use one called Seesmic Desktop for Mac. I’ve been working on getting http://iwblogger.com working with Facebook and Twitter, but it’s infrequent—random at best. It doesn’t catch everything.
At times, your site blog seems to load very slow. Is it because your site is busy or do you need to upgrade your server?
~ServerMac1
@ ServerMac1 – I’m going to step out in good faith and believe you are not a “spammer” or “bot” by saying most of the slow speeds you will experience on iwblogger are from the amount of traffic or usage being requested of the site. However, from time-to-time slow speeds are the result of maintenance and backup. We try to perform these actions late at night when fewer individuals are using the site. As far as our servers, we’d love to upgrade them if you are willing to contribute to the process.
I’m glad to see H-D struggle. They’ve been price gouging for years. It’s about time they felt the pain. Too bad Buell is falling. I’d rather see Buell succeed and H-D stumble, but if it’s both than I’ll take that.
The real question will be “who will build the parts”… Suppliers? Or will Buell make their own frames, motors, etc. It would seem doubtful Buell would get new designs and manufacturing in place with investor money in this market.
And, of course, there is the issue of Harleys’ trademark/patents on everything Buell, as pointed out earlier.
Nonetheless, Erick started Buell from scratch the first time and is the only guy around I know of who could do it again, something I was instantly aware of when I met him years ago.