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EBR closes, files for receivership

The point is ( I don't watch AMA ,its a Joke) going to WSB was a big stretch for such a small company, and racing here alone would have saved precious $. Thats all, a little reading between the lines boys and girls.
 
Calling it...Motus is next.

I hope not.

Buell emphasized racing but the problem with racing is there is one winner and all the rest are "losers". You gotta podium a bunch before you gain racer cred. That wasn't happening with the Buells.

Motus have done a lot of stuff different than EBR. The engine ("baby block four) has several marketing applications, and the bikes are aimed at a larger population of prospective buyers.

But the pace of development is rapid, and Motus has been "in development" a pretty long time. I really wish these guys from Alabama success, but they gotta get on with it.....

WWWobble
 
Saving a few dollars on racing fuel and tires was never going to make a difference for EBR, they were always going to need a big financing package to make the necessary ramp up as a legitimate manufacturer.

From what I've read it looks like the expected financing package withdrew. Was that Hero? Hard to say.


P.S. This may be a little hard ball by Hero… two weeks ago in Cycle World the President of Hero said he wanted to buy the rest of EBR any time Erik wanted to sell. Now he may have the option of buying the company from the court receiver if EBR can't work out a recovery plan.
 
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I feel like there's an important yardstick to stand by here, and that's that Confederate is still in business. Poor EBR.
 
Saving a few dollars on racing fuel and tires was never going to make a difference for EBR, they were always going to need a big financing package to make the necessary ramp up as a legitimate manufacturer.

From what I've read it looks like the expected financing package withdrew. Was that Hero? Hard to say.

You have no clue as what it takes to go Racing
A few tires and a can of gas will definitely not cut it.
 
You have no clue as what it takes to go Racing
A few tires and a can of gas will definitely not cut it.


Don't lose perspective, it's still chips and beer money. What's a top level (Kawasaki or Ducati) WorldSBK program cost? Maybe $10-$15 million a year?

Hero is spending $500 million dollars on capex this year… new manufacturing and assembly plant and equipment.



The more I look at this the more I think Hero just threw a chin high fastball over the inside of the plate.
 
WSB, EBR was racing in the liter class not 600cc.
I am quite aware of this because the rules would not allow them to be in SuperSport.
Clutch. I'm talking about the EBR1190 in AMA Superbike, not the 1125r.
I was quite aware of this, too. The whole DMG EBR b.s. just annoyed the heck out of me. Ducati's compensation in MotoGP annoys the heck out of me, also. I strongly dislike compensation in competitive racing. So there. :twofinger
Apparently EBR didn't either.
Bada - bing.
The more I look at this the more I think Hero just threw a chin high fastball over the inside of the plate.
You mean like, "put up or we pull the plug." Or, "the plug is pulled 'cause like you ain't putting up".
 
I feel like there's an important yardstick to stand by here, and that's that Confederate is still in business. Poor EBR.

How is Confederate even comparable?
 
How is Confederate even comparable?

One's a company that makes bikes with unique engineering and flair, and the other one is a company that makes bikes with unique engineering and flair and is bankrupt.

(Mostly I'm just being an asshole, nothing to see here. I do feel for Eric, but there's a point where reading a little/following the dude's history you just see this consistent string of really, really bad business decisions, over and over. The mass market doesn't care about engineering, and he has spent 32 years failing to learn that lesson. Throughout his career, it appears that more than anything else he has needed a handler to reign him in a bit and get him focused on the right problems to solve, and also to tell him in many ways to stop re-inventing the wheel. It's a sad story, but also completely expected. Dude's a brilliant engineer but I can only watch him hit himself in the face so many times before sympathy dries up.)
 
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One's a company that makes bikes with unique engineering and flair, and the other one is a company that makes bikes with unique engineering and flair and is bankrupt.

Ridiculous. Confederate was out of business for years after Katrina and has only ever produced a handful of $70,000 plus boutique bikes. They are mostly talk and no action. Nothing like EBR (or Buell) in any way.

No one has accomplished as much as Erik Buell in attempting to design, build, sell or race an American sportbike. No one has even come close. Not Michael Czysz. Not Fisher's crappy SV knock-off. Not Motus or any one else.

I'm not Buell fanboy. I've never owned a Buell or EBR. Some perspective is needed. Look what he got done. Buell actually built thousands of bikes. He went racing in AMA Superbike and claimed podiums agains Yosh and Graves.

Looks pretty impressive to me. But I'm not one of the experts on BARF who could have made a runaway success of EBR. :laughing
 
I don't find too much value in shooting for the stars, failing quickly and dramatically, and leaving a pile of folks in the lurch on parts, support, and expertise to fix issues. Building thousands of bikes is something that you can easily do by throwing money at the problem, and he mostly did that by spending other people's money at a pretty excessive rate and failing to recognize when strategic partnerships didn't make sense. He went ama racing with a huge pile of money and some excellent riders and did fine, but it seems that it took place at the cost of his company.

Confederate has the sense to understand their place in the market - they make boutique bikes for a select audience and they do that and are continuing to do that respectably. Buell has never seemed to focus overmuch on his dreams and not enough on the realities and has left a whole pile of customers, employees, and creditors in the lurch. The first time around, honest mistake, the second time...shrug. If you're egocentric enough to name the company after yourself - well, live by the sword, die by the sword.

The point of being a motorcycle manufacturer isn't to flame out every couple of years, it's to build something long term. If you wanna build crazy engineered customs, start a custom shop - at least then you do something that aligns with realistic expectations for employment, and customer support.

Edit - I will say, I'd still buy a Buell, but I'm buying it on the most American terms - it's gotta be cheap enough to be disposable because I know in 5 years resale value will be hilariously low and parts will be completely unobtainable, and 5 years after that the bikes will be the sole domain of obsessed collectors hoarding parts, so prepare to negotiate with the Furies to get parts to keep yourself on the road.
 
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his first bike(race) the RW 750 came out just in time to become obsolete when the ama discontinued F1-he seems always to be running a day late and a dollar short.
If I recall the RW 750 was a square 4 two stroke licensed/bought from Barton in England? Agree about his timing. Maybe now another manufacturer will use 1 large rotor, but with an aesthetically pleasing caliper:rofl. Maybe selll bikes for 20% less instead of racing WSBK ? Seemed like good press in US mags, but us consumers are a strange breed. Liked my test ride but not a hooligan type, scared of heights:twofinger
Motus $30,000 + for a heavy V4 ? Now I see the Confederate connection.
 
The point of being a motorcycle manufacturer isn't to flame out every couple of years, it's to build something long term. If you wanna build crazy engineered customs, start a custom shop - at least then you do something that aligns with realistic expectations for employment, and customer support.

I suggest you look at the financial history of Ducati, Aprilia and Triumph; all of which experienced financial collapse and production shut downs, ownership stuggles and left customers hanging as a result of bad management decisions. All lurched from crisis to crisis before finding financial stability (for now).
 
Here's the thing though - none of those brands staked themselves around a core individual or group of individuals. Buell has sort of poisoned his own well and name by consistently failing at sustaining a business, and those brands succeeded under new ownership and new owners, because as DataDan pointed out, the skill sets change depending on your company size and market. You see a similar problem all the time in the tech and startup space - people don't grow with their companies and drag them down with them. Buell seems to be really good at convincing people to give him money or partnerships in terms that completely screw him over or he mismanages to failure. After 32 years of developing performance focused bikes, and a giant influx of money - you better be able to rack up something racing. It's funny, the thing I respect most and least about Buell is his business skills - his ability to start something and his inability to sustain it. I struggle to think of a thing in the engineering space he has done that actually has a major impact - the one thing is under slung exhausts, but he hardly invented that, although he perhaps implemented it more consistently. The rest of it has all be engineering solutions that fixed an insignificant problem, if anything at all.
 
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Erik did not want to sell, I think it's "we're pulling the plug to force you to sell"
He may never sell his name or anything else.
Example: Cunningham (Peeps can google/wiki the name if it is unfamiliar).
Bob Lutz and some other folks put together a modern Cunningham. Clay models, spec engine, test mule, the whole 8.5 yards. At the 11th hour of development and funding, Cunningham's kid decides that the name is worth several million more than anyone was willing to pay. He killed the whole project and now has squat. Egos can get awfully big and irrational. Buell might be similar to this Cunningham guy.
 
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