Buell Returns To The Streets

Well it’s taken a while, mostly due to a requirement from his former employers Harley Davidson to not produce street bikes for a year, but now unbound Erik Buell brings his innovative bike tech back to the streets with the 1190rs.

We’ve known this has been coming for some time, he’s been selling t-shirts about it for long enough on-line, but now the machine itself has been revealed in all its glory.  In many ways this is a tamed, albeit not by much, race bike for which the Buell team has won many AMA races.

The 1190RS is modeled on Buells $44,900 1190RR race bike, which is a natural evolution of the rotax engined based 1125R from the HD era.  The new road bike should give 170bhp for an impressive road-going missile experience.  But awesome performance was never in doubt given the race pedigree, a vital factor that the 1190rs has is good looks.  A lot of people were critical of the look of HD era Buell sports bikes, mostly due to the sizable air intakes, but there is notable on-line drooling over the new machine.  Carbon fibre is everywhere and the stacked headlights are a stylish look.  Also getting a lot of attention is the barely there wheel architecture, part of the drive to keep the bikes weight down.  The weight is so minimal it’s rumored that 20lbs of ballast will be required to make the bike AMA certified.

Nothing it seems can keep Buell down and an all American sports bike will be a hit for many buyers stateside.  The Buell motto of ‘Never Quit’ serves the company and its founder well.