Buell is Gone. Why is That? Well, Here's One Opinion

Buell has been closed by the accountants at Harley-Davidson. This was Eric Buell's lifelong project - to make H-D a road racing powerhouse. The technology which was used in the Buell motorcycle was impressive in many cases - though, some of it had been done before - and, I always thought it was good to have them there if only to influence other manufacturers. The problem came when they tried to turn an engine based on a nearly half-century-old design into a race bike - it just vibrated to pieces. But, they had finally gone out and had a very modern engine created to fit into a racing chassis. Along comes DMG and, suddenly, the Buell 1125R is legal to race against 600c.c. Japanese fours; this essentially made it look like DMG and Buell had set up 'cheater' rules for them. And the final nail in their coffin came from H-D's accountants after reporting a huge sales drop...

It will be sad to see the marque disappear as I really hoped they would continue looking outside of H-D for powerplants and they just might build a motorcycle I would buy - something very different and very well-designed...

So, this leads me to the article. It is an opinion piece, and I am not in total agreement with the author, but it is worth reading for yet another perspective on the demise of Buell.

http://tinyurl.com/yjtmfqo

P.S. I just hope that Harley opens their minds enough (I know, not likely given their conservative bend) and learns some design and engineering from the Buell line of motorcycles...