History of Erik Buell Racing: Who is Erik Buell?

Hero MotoCorp's MD & CEO, Pawan Munjal (left) with Erik Buell (right) of Erik Buell Racing

Born in the town of Pittsburgh, Erik Buell, the founder of the Buell Motorcycle Company and Erik Buell Racing outfit, has a long history to him. Raised on a farm in Gibsonia and cutting his teeth on machinery in his early years of growing up, Erik Buell was quick to get fascinated by the world of motorcycles and soon started racing them in his early 20s.

Starting on a moped, Buell was quick to upgrade to a basket-case Harley-Davidson that, in his own words, "To be exact, it was a '57 Panhead in a '52 frame with KHK front end. Red metal flake paint and those crazy two-piece ape hanger handlebars, which would come loose and swing back and forth. I'd shove wads of steel wool into the mufflers to quiet it down for the cops, but when I was really hauling, it would shoot these glowing balls of flame out the back. Man, that's cool stuff when you're a kid!"

Even as he pursued road-racing making regular appearances in AMA Superbike class and ‘Formula One’ racing series, on the side the man also worked as a motorcycle mechanic by the day while pursuing night class for his engineering degree at the University of Pittsburgh. After successfully completing his engineering in 1979, Buell got placed into Harley-Davidson – a big break for an ambitious engineer. When working at Harley-Davidson’s factory at Milwaukee, Buell looked after the concept motorcycles, the Porsche-designed "Nova" V-four program as well as the stability and refinements to the chassis design of the FXR series of cruisers, known for their rubber-mounted engines.

Loyal to his American roots, while Harley-Davidson suffered through turbulent times in the eighties, Buell’s participation in road-racing slowed down and he wasn’t very keen on racing Japanese or American machines while working for an American marquee. In 1981, Buell came across The Barton, a small privately owned engine developer in UK. He bought one of the Barton machines and raced it with mild success in some of the popular racing events of that era. Within a year, Barton decided to shut shop and Buell was  handed the option to buy the entire Barton setup including the spare engines, parts, drawings and rights to produce and sell the machinery.

In order to focus on his new venture, Buell left his job at Harley-Davidson soon after purchasing Barton. Thereafter focusing on his Buell Motor Company, his prototype Barton, renamed as RW750 (RW standing for Road Warrior) was selling for half the price of the popular Honda machines of that time and it showed a lot of promise. Sadly in 1985, AMA announced that the Superbike class would replace the Formula One class as the premier racing series for the 1986 season, thus leaving no scope for Buell to prove the might of his RW750 race-machine.

But undeterred by the unfortunate incident, Buell used his contacts at Harley-Davidson he managed to score some unused XR1100 race engines and then designed an extremely lightweight yet stiff rubber-mounted frame around the engine, that was patented by him as ‘the Uniplanar’. A trademark feature on all Buell-made motorcycles back then. An innovator by nature, Buell’s wrap around fairing was another invention that significantly reduced the drag over its competition. Buell’s design used the engine as the stressed member for better handling dynamics but the highlight was the under-belly mounted rear suspension setup that operated in reverse of the conventional compression-rebound design.

Soon Buell ran out of the engine stock for the XR1100 and he then moved onto the newly introduced 1203cc Harley-Davidson Evolution engine employed in the 'Sportster' range. Building on it, he launched the RR1200 model in1988. A street-legal model designed for the race-track. During the 1990s, Harley-Davidson invested a 51% stake in the Buell Motorcycle Company and later in 2003 took complete control over the firm in order to sell all Buell-made sport motorcycles via its select official dealerships. Erik Buell still headed the entire operation for Buell Motorcycle Company. However, with turbulent times hitting the American market in the new decade – Harley-Davidson was forced to wrap up the Buell division in 2009.

Not the one to rest easy, in 2009 November, Erik Buell launched Erik Buell Racing (EBR), a firm essentially focusing on developing race-machines based on the Harley-Davidson engines and called as the Buell 1125R. Post the end of deal with Harley-Davidson, Buell shifted his focus back onto racing machinery and going a step ahead launched a race-only version of the 1125R with a bored out kit and complete race-spec equipment, calling it the 1190RR, made only for racing purposes. Entering various racing series in 2010, EBR announced the entry of its first street-legal version, the 1190RS in 2011, which would be sold as a 2012 model in a limited run of just hundred units. However, there are plans to introduce more models in the range and expand the product portfolio for street use. That brings us to the latest development of Hero MotoCorp joining hands with Erik Buell Racing for a technical alliance which could see both the entities benefit from the alliance and adding fitting motorcycles to their respective model ranges.