No one will be surprised that Erik Buell is planning a street bike based on the 1190RR, especially after the video back in July. So when EBR wants to put out more information, where does it show up? It appears on a t shirt with the new 1190RS logo on the Rat Pak Records website along with an announcement of a teaser video coming September 14th. They don’t show the teaser, they tell you a teaser video is coming, which may or may not show very much. The website also includes this short bit:
The 1190RS will be the new street bike from Erik Buell Racing! The design is currently in the pre-production / testing stage and is not yet available for public sale.
It’s certainly an, um, … interesting way to do a model introduction. Of course, it’s getting attention so I guess it works.
Thanks for the tip, Mark.
Link: Rat Pak Records
Scott says
Cool!!!!! In some ways, it seems like it’s been a long wait and in other ways things have seemed to move amazingly fast. Big thanks to Rat Pak for sponsoring the race bike and helping keep things going. I’ve already got some shirts on order . . . not sure if I’ll be able to afford the actual bike, but once things get going, there should be something more affordable to come. And even if I can’t get one right away, it will just be cool to have a real American Superbike out there on the race-track to root for.
Jesse says
The logo is pretty freaking pimp.
jeff from va says
The first half of karma………….
hoyt says
grassroots-style. Great!
fast eddie says
hindsight is always 20/20 . Harley Davidson makes poor moves time and time again.
Eric Buell is the real winner here. I wonder who the lucky team member is going to be ?
Polaris, Bombadier , M V agusta . I hope that its someone with some pocket depth, so
that I might be able to afford his next step perfecting the modern day sport bike. Last
time I posted I had put on around 17,500 mi on my newly acquired s3t . coming up on 26k now . Keep up the good work Eric . The innovations you have invented work really well. I’m waiting [and saving ] FE
Will13 says
Thank God for racing, as obviously this comes as a way to meet homologation requirements. Luckily the public will stand to potentially benefit from this, though I’m interested to see production estimates and price.
Good news nonetheless!
Mark says
As much as I’m wishing Erik & Co. all the success in the world, I don’t see this as a viable plan for the long term. If he is successful at bringing the 1190RS to production, there are a ton of roadblocks to overcome.
Firstly, how are they going to get access to a new supply of engines, frames, etc. from Rotax and all the other suppliers when HD owns the rights to everything? I’m sure Erik has a fairly good inventory of left over parts, but what do they do once that stock is depleted?
If he’s only planning on building as many as his current stock will provide, that won’t be too many and will guaranty that the bike will be very expensive and limited. Who is going to invest money into a company with a plan based around building a few handfuls of bikes, before having to start all over again from scratch?
The only way I see this working is if HD decides to sell Erik the full rights to produce the bike, which will cost a ton of money, if HD even decides to sell it at all. My hunch is that this may be exactly what Erik’s plan is, and I hope he is successful in doing so.
I also, don’t think that companies like Bombardier, Polaris or MV Agusta are going to be knocking down Erik’s door to hand him the keys to their factory to do what he wants. These companies have very talented and gifted people working for them already. The reason some of them don’t build a sport bike already is more of a marketing decision than a technical one. If Polaris decided to commit their resources on a new sport bike, they could start tomorrow.
Scott says
Mark, I think we have to assume that if EBR is announcing this bike, Erik has the rights he needs to make it. We don’t yet know the details of how that happened or is happening, but he wouldn’t be announcing the new bike unless he had the rights required to build and sell those bikes.
Mark says
Scott, that’s a big assumption. I’m sure he has the rights to all the parts he obtained as part of the original settlement, and most likely even complete bikes made from those parts. But, if he has obtained the rights to everything that HD owns relating to the production of the 1125R, allowing him to restart production of the bikes, it’s news to me. I would think that this would have been bombshell news and not something that just happened without anybody knowing about it or EBR not even announcing it.
Yeti says
I wonder what kind of a dealer network they will have for sales and service? If they have their own dealers I wonder if they will also stock parts and so forth for current Buell models or if we’ll have to continue to hope H-D will provide parts and service.
Stacius says
I read on another site that Erik was let out of his non-compete EARLY. If he’s going as far as to announce that he’s got a production bike in the works, then the only thing that could be holding him back is a financial partner.
I don’t know the man personally, but it seems to me, that he’d try and find a way to raise funds himself before getting into bed with a large corporation (again). Since EBR now has some experience with customer sales and service, etc…it might be in his best interest to keep his life’s work as close as possible. Still, I’d love to see what he could accomplish with a stiff financial wind at his back. Unfortunately, everyone with the exceptions of Triumph and Harley are still struggling.
Cab says
What a logo! Hire a pro, don’t let your buddy draw it.
Love Erik, he is awesome. But riding around with that on my bike would be a bit embarrassing..
todd says
I think the “EBR” part of the logo looks the best for a motorcycle application. It’s just too bad it immediately reminds me of “CBR” or “BRP” and Honda and Can-Am may have a problem with the similarities. On the other hand, it does make sense for a company like Bombardier to pick up EBR and hit the ground running with a world class sports bike to complete their recent motorcycle re-transition strategy. Not saying they couldn’t do it on their own but having Erik on their team would put them immediately in the spot light with a decent size customer base.
-tod
hoyt says
When asked about his inspiration for some of his music Erik states:
“The inspiration is that I’m a pretty intense guy with strong opinions, and being able to write down your feelings, and then yell them out at 120 dB makes up for all the days I used to have in the big corporation where I had to clamp my mouth shut and sit on my hands.”
The chorus that comes to mind after the last year or so & reading that quote is Rage Against the Machine’s “Freedom”. @ the 5 min. mark
The logo looks good. Even better if is was a bit smaller. Check the black bike on the Rat Pak link
Scott says
Personally, I like the logo . . . but if you’re even considering a logo when looking at bikes . . . I just don’t know what to say about that. Has anyone seen the Ducati Logo? A circle with a line through it? What the heck is that? But I don’t worry about it and I even have a couple shirts with the logo just because it represents one of my favorite bikes.
I love the Erik Buell song: “Anthem X” off of his album. That really says it. Balls to the wall. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5rSKvNH4xw I’d love to hear that used as something of a “Theme Song” at AMA races. It’s be cool to walk through a paddock with that playing over the loudspeakers.
Jim says
Looks great. I hope development continues. I couldn’t ride that type of bike long (too many back surgeries) but hopefully it will lead to development of something like the ulyssess for the rest of us to ride. Best of luck to erik and crew
Cowpieapex says
Go Eric! Build me one more for when my S3T is ready to retire. In the mean time I will fly through the mountain passes on this machine built by you, HD, Storme Winter and me (2,000 miles last week, 56,000 so far).
Yeah, GET A PAIR!!