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On First Look, The New Buell SuperTouring 1190 Fails to Impress

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The new Buell SuperTouring 1190 motorcycle debuted this past weekend at the Daytona Bike Week, but you would never know it from the American brand. Save for one video on Instagram, the machine is virtually non-existent from Buell’s marketing channels.

The lack of a coordinated product launch live at an event and also virtually online can perhaps be forgiven from a small company with limited resources, but that same forgiveness shouldn’t apply to the motorcycle itself.

“A lack of resources” is perhaps the best way to describe the new Buell SuperTouring 1190, as the bike shown in Daytona is generously a bit rough around the edges, and not what you would expect from a serious player in the motorcycle industry.

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Bikes

Buell SuperTouring 1190 Model Debuting This Weekend

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If you are in Daytona, Florida this weekend, then in addition to the usual Bike Week festivities and Daytona 200 race, you will have the chance to be one of the first to see the first new Buell motorcycle in quite a while.

This is because Buell Motorcycles is getting ready to unveil its Buell SuperTouring 1190 sport-tourer.

Based on the 185hp / 101 lbs•ft 1190cc v-twin engine found in the Buell Hammerhead 1190 superbike, the American brand is touting the SuperTouring as the fastest production touring bike on the market.

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A&R Pro

The Foolishness of Resurrecting Buell Motorcycles

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The news that the Buell Motorcycles name would return from the shadows of the motorcycle industry has certainly stirred the two-wheel world . The American brand was not without its rabid fans, but it garnered plenty of detractors as well over the course of its history, and through its various incarnations.

Never quite at home inside the Harley-Davidson family, the Buell Motorcycle Company was shuttered in October 2009. Not one to quit though, Erik Buell continued the company's ideals in another self-branded endeavor: Erik Buell Racing.

This startup would be short-lived though, bringing only two models to market, in its roughly five-year run. Despite being unshackled from Harley-Davidson, EBR foundered in the marketplace, and floundered on the race track.

At the conclusion of both of these separate ventures, there was Liquid Asset Partners - a Michigan-based company that makes its business from buying the assets of bankrupt companies and flipping them to buyers for a profit.

But for Bill Melvin (the CEO of LAP), the motorcycle brands of Buell and EBR were not business as usual.

At the end of EBR's road under Erik Buell's management, LAP continued its operations, albeit in a very limited manner, assembling motorcycles from the plethora of parts LAP had acquired in the bankruptcy proceedings, and selling them to EBR's remaining enthusiastic customers.

When the chance came to buy the Buell name from Harley-Davidson, LAP didn't hesitate. The two estranged motorcycle companies of Erik Buell could now merge under one roof, and Buell Motorcycles was born again.

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Rumors

First Glimpse of the Buell 1190AX “Super Tourer” Adventure Bike

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Buell Motorcycles is back, in case you missed the news. The American brand is in new hands new, merging back with its offshoot of Erik Buell Racing, under the leadership of Bill Melvin from Liquid Asset Partners.

For their resurgence, Buell aims to have 10 motorcycles on the market by 2024 – a grand ambition by any standard.

To help them reach that goal though, Buell will leverage three of the known models from the EBR days: the 1190RX superbike, the 1190SX streetfighter, and the less-known-about 1190AX.

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News

Buell Motorcycles Back In Business – 10 New Models by 2024

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Do not adjust your computer monitors. Don’t worry about the date, this is not an April Fools joke. What you are seeing is real. Buell is back.

The Buell Motorcycles name is returning back to business, as Erik Buell Racing has acquired the name from Harley-Davidson, and plans to relaunch its motorcycle business under the moniker.

With that news, Buell Motorcycles has big plans, as the American company hopes to release 10 motorcycles by the 2024 model year.

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News

27 Years of Buell Motorcycles

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If the American motorcycle brand was still in business, this year would have been the Buell Motorcycle Company’s 30th birthday. Treated more like a line on the cash flow sheet to its parent company Harley-Davidson than a true self-supporting motorcycle brand, Buell motorcycles suffered from not being “Harley enough” for the Bar & Shield devout, and conversely wasn’t adopted by the non-believers because of its extensive compromises with the Milwaukee brand.

Still, in its 27 years, Buell Motorcycles managed to build a cult following of riders, though the numbers in its ranks were never enough to make the brand truly profitable. With Harley-Davidson facing dire straights during the recent economic depression, the company circled the wagons around its core assets, and closed the doors to Buell Motorcycles in the process.

The ethos of the brand continues with Erik Buell Racing though, which soon after its creation released the EBR 1190RS superbike — a race-ready motorcycle that isn’t too dissimilar from the Buell 1125R sport bike. We still don’t know what the future holds for Erik Buell’s new company, though a bevy of models are on his company’s product road map. We think if you polled a few former Buell owners, they would want to see this poster (full-size after the jump) updated.

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News

Buell Swingarm Exhaust: Still Owned by Harley-Davidson

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Math can be tough sometimes, especially when it comes to counting, so we can understand the confusion surrounding the news that Erik Buell has recently been awarded a patent for a design that incorporates a motorcycle exhaust system inside the swingarm of the bike (now that’s some engineering). However we have the unpleasant responsibility of saying that this patent is not in fact owned by Erik Buell and Erik Buell Racing, as the filing date and patent assignee information were clearly over-looked by early reports on Buell’s patent.

While the patent was published on October 28, 2010, its was filed by Buell last year (April 24, 2010), well before Harley-Davidson closed the company, and while Erik Buell still worked as a Harley-Davidson employee. As such, the patent is assigned to the Buell Motorcycle Company, whose intellectual property is still owned by Harley-Davidson.

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Opinion/Editorial

The Good, Bad, And Ugly of the Used Buell Market

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It’s been a few weeks since Harley-Davidson announced the immediate closure of its subsidiary Buell, where dealers began slashing prices both to liquidate stock and to cash-in on Harley’s $5,000 sale incentive. Basic economics dictates that any time a price is raised or lowered it has repercussions to the product’s resale value, and in the case of Buell’s sudden price drop and dumping of basically new bikes into the market, the consequences for current Buell owners seem dreary. Or are they?

In order to find an answer to that question, we asked Joshua Minix, former government think-tank Economist, and current John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, to wade through the implications of Buell’s closure, and how it affects the used Buell motorcycle market. Click past the jump for his analysis.

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