Yes Reg, in my view you did. While there is obviously an interconnect, designing Erik Buell's future life is a far cry from the desire to see new Buell motorcycles on the road.
"Do we have evidence that Erik wants that to happen"
Reg, the answer to your question is just a click away. Erik has made statements on facebook that indicate he would like to build streetbikes again. Does this directly answer the question of whether he wants a "future Buell motorcycle"? I think so.
I just checked and this was a response he posted about 30 minutes ago to a query from someone (not me)
"Yes, I still would like to be involved in building street sportbikes again. How that will occur has yet to be determined."
To me that means Erik would like there to be a future Buell motorcycle. Taken literally I am sure you could argue that may not mean "Buell" motorcycles, but I would like to think it does.
Didn't he spend 25 years running uphill trying to build bikes and being treated like a redheaded stepchild by HD? What didn't kill him made him stronger. The only bikes I'll ride is whatever Erik makes. Till the end!
And track days are friggin expensive. My taxes pay for public roads and we like to use em!
Or tag additional overhead charges on to engine costs?
That was the very first question that popped in my head after reading the article. That alone makes it sound like they were intentionally harming Buell profitability from the get-go.
It looks like Roger has much bigger things to worry about then a Buell puking oil. Maybe like scoring at least one point in the series he is competing in.
Yeah, in the interview he mentions he hasn't scored a point yet. Kawasaki abandoned ALL other forms of road competition to concentrate on World Superbikes. So far, it ain't paying off...
Or trying to cover your own costs by hiding it somewhere else.
Reminds me of a large company I once worked with. They had two different divisions working on the same site but in different buildings. One division was manufacturing - extremely large and had all of the maintenance, facility, utility, support and personnel. The other was R&D - not so big - maybe 3 or 4 buildings total.
Because R&D was so small and they shared some utilities and facilities with the manufacturing division, all maintenance and facility support was provided through the manufacturing division. To accomplish this, R&D paid an flat annual rate to manufacturing for this support. Ultimately R&D was subsidizing maintenance costs for manufacturing. I don't remember the exact numbers, but lets say they paid for about 30% of the total site costs but used less than 10% of the services.
This overpayment was hiding inefficiencies in manufacturing and was brought to light when R&D was moved off site.
I am not in the "know" but when I see one division (HD) overcharging another division (Buell) for services, it is not necessarily to create problems for the other division, but rather to hide your own problems.
LJ: I was recently given some information (which I don't believe I'm free to divulge, though I wasn't specifically told NOT to repeat it) that pretty much backs up your hypothesis.
I'd rather let the source chime in here than paraphrase what I was told in any event.
I am not in the "know" but when I see one division (HD) overcharging another division (Buell) for services, it is not necessarily to create problems for the other division, but rather to hide your own problems.
The Titanic is sitting a little lower in the water than it was a short while ago...
As I am sitting here thinking about what he had said about Buell puking oil all over the track. My thought is what if.
In the next few years.
He mysteriously winds up on an Erik Buell Race Bike racing some place in the world? But that is a What If. Sometimes the words you say now haunt you in the future.
We often proceed here under the assumption that there will be a future Buell motorcycle. Do we have evidence that Erik wants that to happen?
I have a hard time believing that Erik would just leave Harley-Davidson to open-up a race motorcycle shop if he wasn't going to turn that into another motorcycle company. He could have stayed with Harley, made a nice paycheck with a pension plan rather than taking a risk in starting up a company relying on selling motorcycles to race in the AMA, which has screwed him over more than once in his lifetime. The cost alone would make most people opt out of that, not to mention the shape of economy we're in right now! This is a HUGE risk but I really feel that there will be another motorcycle company headed by Erik Buell in the near future.
Vesrah Suzuki’s Tray Batey is awake and alert and being examined at Gwinnett County Medical Center. If you like Tray, you may want to pray for him. If I'm hurt, or need medical attention, I'll take the risk and go an extra 10 miles or so to East Side Medical. Gwinett County Medical hasn't a great reputation.
Finally, with 8 riders crashing out, Roger scores a point by simply finishing. And since he was one second ahead of the dead last finisher, his 14th place finish gained him 2 points. Oh, by the way, the rider that he "beat" also scored his first point of the season in this crashfest of a race.
