Jan 27 2008
Harley Davidson’s 2008 Buell America’s Sport Bike
Buell is the innovative builder of sports bikes working under the auspices of Harley Davidson. For years now Buell has been putting out a limited number of bikes for the Harley Davidson line of bikes. This year they are coming out with a model that may raise its numbers out of the doldrums. The Buell 1125R hits the road this year with the first engine for the line not made in America.
It’s also the first large Buell without a Harley engine, which is significant given that Harley-Davidson owns Buell. The 1125R sports a liquid- cooled V-twin made in Austria by BRP, a Canadian company.
Buell said Harley executives encouraged him to seek an outside engine supplier because Harley was too busy with its own projects. Had he waited, Buell said, the 1125R might have stayed on the drawing board. (Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
“This is a brand new motorcycle from the rider down,” Buell said. With a little luck, it will give the company a bigger share of the sport-bike market dominated by Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki.
Is it going to work? Who knows. The major draw to the Japanese sport bikes is not only their speed and handling, but also the price. Anything Harley has always been expensive. It is the price you pay for an American product. But then wait, this model has an Austrian engine, the bike is only constructed in Milwaukee. It will be interesting to see. Unfortunately over the past few years relatively few Buell bikes have been built.
The boutique company shipped 12,460 bikes in 2006 compared with Harley’s nearly 4.6 million.
Buell’s sales are strongest in Europe, where street bikes with Italian pedigrees share the narrow roads with Ferraris. Unlike Harleys, which are made for cruising down the highway, sport bikes are made for crouching and leaning into tight turns.
After testing the 1125R on a California track, motorcycle critic David Booth described the bike this way: “Any motorcycle that makes me feel both fast and comfortable at high speeds has to be the bike of the year.
Now my question is does it run on rice . . . or potatoes.
