Buell Motorcycles is planning to take its comeback global, with sales outside North America once again—but first, they plan to sell their machines in Canada.
“But wait,” you say. “I haven’t been paying attention, but isn’t Buell dead as a company?” You’re right. Harley-Davidson killed off its Buell subsidiary about 15 years ago. Then founder Erik Buell went and started Erik Buell Racing, which came to an end about 10 years ago. But about five years back, investors kinda-sorta restarted the company, and they’ve been introducing new models ever since.
Note that we said “introducing.” There was a lot of PR noise when Buell brought out the new 1190 Baja model (the “world’s most powerful off-road motorcycle”) and the Hammerhead sportbike and the Super Cruiser. However, there certainly hasn’t been a quick proliferation of these bikes in the wild. Anything Buell builds is in very limited numbers. However, thanks to investment from state and federal governments, it looks like Michigan-based Buell is on the path to ramping up production.
The first place Buell plans to expand to is the Canadian market, then overseas after that, the PR says:
Buell’s first global expansion will be into Canada during Summer 2024. Timelines for the UK, EU and other markets are being planned, with compliance being led by Barbara Kiss, former head of Global Compliance at General Motors, and Buell’s compliance specialist Emily Reid-Barker.
If your local dealership told you they could bring in any of these new models, would you be interested?
We’ll share more details on this as we hear them from Buell, but at a minimum, you should expect to see the company’s machines on the 2024 show circuit, if they’re really serious about this plan.
Think I’ll wait until I see one – live
Yep – and based on the Buell history, don’t expect Buell to be around long.