Here's an excerpt from an e-mail I got from a buddy of mine on Buell...... Most of the e-mail is irrelevant to the Buell topic, see the last portion for any mention of Buell, but I thought it was interesting so I included it. I’m sure there were a lot of hurt feelings over the limited success of the VR1000 (Lucifer’s Hammer). The history of the VR1000 goes like this; an engineer named Steve Scheibe (Roush Racing) worked on different areas of the bike, including the cylinder heads and the machine's fuel injection system. After a running engine was conceived, Harley-Davidson wanted to bring the project back within the halls of Harley-Davidson racing and engineering, (big mistake) but they wanted someone from Roush to oversee the project. Scheibe left Roush and became a Harley-Davidson employee in the early 1990s. Former GP chassis designer Mike Eatough, who came to Harley-Davidson when H-D acquired Amstrong, designed the VR 1000 chassis, widely described as one of the best Superbike chassis ever (Eric Buell was not involved.) At the race debut in Daytona it was clear that the VR 1000 was not ready for a long race at a very fast racetrack. Miguel DuHamel's (former flattracker and road racing great) VR 1000 DNF'd the race with a loud explosion while running well back. Electrical problems and large spinning metal pieces were hitting each other inside the engine, it was clear that the VR 1000, even with its long development period, wasn't ready. Yet, when the team arrived at circuits that suited the bike, DuHamel rode like a God. He qualified the VR 1000 on the front row at Mid-Ohio, and actually led the race until the shift lever fell off the bike. Then he led the race at Brainerd, something experts thought would be an impossibility given Brainerd's one mile long front straight. A brief ride off track took him out of the running for the podium. DuHamel left Harley at the end of the season and former Cagiva GP rider Doug Chandler (another ex=flattracker and road racer extraordinaire) joined the team the next year. 1995 was largely a season to forget, Chandler was injured for most of it; however, his teammate and childhood dirt track rival Chris Carr did put the VR 1000 on the pole at Pomona though, the first and only pole the VR would ever score. So-called experts will gloss over the VR 1000's history as one failure after another, but, in fact, the 1996 season was fairly decent for the Harley-Davidson team and would be the one in which they were the most consistently competitive. Tom Wilson, who realized a lifetime dream by riding for Harley on their Superbike program, won the Mid-Ohio Superbike race on the VR 1000—he crossed the finish line first—but a red flag thrown out to stop the race put the race back a lap; Pascal Picotte was (ironically) credited with the win. Need more? At Sears Point that year, Carr qualified second fastest, with Wilson too on the front row. The pair ran second and third in that race before it was red-flagged and re-started. Their clutches then dust from two starts; they didn't do much after the race was re-started. (They finished 4th and 5th.) After Sears, Wilson went to Las Vegas and qualified on the front row. There's more. Pascal Picotte finished second and third on the VR1000 in two different seasons, and, perhaps more importantly than that, led the Daytona 200 for a few laps before slow pit stops doomed him to a poor finish. It hasn't all been bad. In that period there were huge political battles inside Harley-Davidson over the team. The budget for it went from being the responsibility of engineering to marketing (this was the downfall of the program). Forces inside Harley-Davidson tried to have it killed and usually Scheibe had to put his neck on the tracks to get funding every year. Scheibe is not a people person, which is not an insult, and his battles with VP of Engineering Earl Werner and Erik Buell are legendary within the halls of Juneau Avenue. The difference was Harley fielded the VR1000 from a board room with the wrong people involved, Buell’s involvement with the 1125R was limited and the success came mostly from Bruce Rossmeyer’s (now deceased) pocket. As for his sales figures, here’s the reality, and what I’ve been saying all along. Buell attracts customers in the demographic age range of 25 to 55. The average U.S. retail purchaser of a new Buell XB motorcycle is a forty year old male. The majority of new Buell owners have a median household income of approximately $80,900. The average U.S. retail purchaser of a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle is a married male in his mid to late forties (nearly two-thirds of U.S. retail purchasers of new Harley-Davidson motorcycles are between the ages of 35 and 54) with a median household income of approximately $84,300. There is some overlap, but the average age is remarkably different, this is why Harley will suffer in years to come they have abandoned the 25 to 55 age group. Not sure where this guy got his sales figures, they are easily available in any 10K annual reports the company has to release as a public company. Here are the true numbers. 2003 units shipped Buell 9,974 2003 units shipped Harley 291,147 2004 units shipped Buell 9,857 a 2% decrease 2004 units shipped Harley 317,289 a 9% increase 2005 units shipped Buell 11,166 a 13% increase 2005 units shipped Harley 329,017 a 4% increase 2006 units shipped Buell 12,460 a 12% increase 2006 units shipped Harley 349,196 a 6% increase 2007 units shipped Buell 11,513 a 8% decrease 2007 units shipped Harley 330,619 a 5% decrease 2008 units shipped Buell 13,119 a 14% increase 2008 units shipped Harley 303,479 a 8% decrease Overall from 2003 to 2008 Harley production numbers were up by about 4% and Buell numbers increased by 32%. Impressive numbers for Buell…..but here is the problem the actual sales numbers for Buell were about 1/3 of the production, so either there is a collector somewhere with thousands of Buell’s in his garage or they bikes aren’t selling. I think we both know the answer to that. The problem is and has always been Harley failed to properly market the Buell line and did not properly incentivize the dealers to move the product line.
