It wasn’t so very many years ago that the mention of a Buell motorcycle would be received by a "What?". Indeed, if you go back twenty-five years you’ll struggle to find anyone at all outside the industry who would associate the name with a motorcycle at all, and that would probably be Erik’s dad. So we’re hardly likely to do a heritage feature on a Buell then? Well, yes, actually, because we learn a lot from the past. It stops us making the same mistakes in the future … well, that’s the theory.

Erik Buell is a life-long motorcyclist who, through hard work, bloody-mindedness and determination found himself, having graduated as an engineer, at Harley-Davidson working as a chassis engineer. Already an amateur road racer, he had made an impact at the 1978 Daytona 200 as the fastest qualifying newcomer, demonstrating that the man is not only bright, he’s quick as well but that combination of racing ambition and engineering ability took him away from Harley-Davidson in 1982 to build his first motorcycle. The RW750, or Road Warrior, was a million miles from anything that has borne his name since: a square-four 750cc 2-stroke which he intended to campaign in the AMA Formula 1 class, where just about anything could race. The bike was actually bought in from a Welsh company called Barton and while you probably haven’t heard of them, you might well know the bike: trawl deep at the back of your memory – the place you choose not to go often, and not without good reason – you might remember David Essex starring in a film called Silver Dream Racer or even, God forbid, singing the title song: that eponymous machine was a Barton.

The explosively-powerful Barton was a long way from being fully developed so he finished its engine off, to the point where it was just powerful and stopped exploding, he built a new frame for it and even went as far as buying the tooling for the engine when Barton went bust. The intention was to supply bikes to the Formula 1 class, and he sold one before the AMA abandoned the series in favour of Superbikes just as everything was coming together. Tough break. No Formula 1, no RW750. Loads of experience though.

He came away from the RW with a formula he trusted: good aerodynamics, short wheelbase in a stiff chassis, and mass centralisation, which he applied to a project for fibreglass specialists, Bell/Vetter. Better known for their Windjammer fairings, and the tank and seat unit for the 1973 Triumph X75 Hurricane – well, actually the 1969 BSA X75 project but that’s another story – Bell/Vetter wanted a cool-looking American sportbike to display at a show celebrating 100 years of American motorcycles and to reintroduce the company after a few wilderness years.

The original brief was for a road-going RW750, but Buell was realistic about trying to put a full-on race bike – especially one with so vicious a power-band as the RW750 – on the street, but as it happened he was also talking to the Harley Owners Group about building a replacement for "Lucifer’s Hammer", Harley’s own Battle of the Twins race bike. He’d got his eye on fifty XR1000 motors languishing in the corner of Harley’s P&A warehouse: fifty being a magic number if you want to qualify as a production motorcycle for racing. The Vetter project became the prototype for a new race bike built for the BoTT class, and it was called the RR1000 Battletwin.

By 1987 the XR1000 was already obsolete. It hadn’t been a big seller because it had been too expensive: it might have had 30% more power and torque than the stock XL1000 but it cost 50% more, and while
more power was available it was at an additional cost through the high-performance kit. It had been introduced in 1983 to provide a foundation for racing, as well as being a true tribute to the phenomenal success of the XR750 wrapped up in a Sportster frame (a not entirely subtle dig at the XL883R’s designer). Alloy XR heads with their redesigned combustion chambers and ports provided the power – usually after they’d been finished off properly by Jerry Branch – as well as somewhere to hang twin 34mm Dell ’Orto slide carbs with their massive air-filters, and twin XR hi-level pipes. Otherwise, an ironhead XL1000 provided the majority of the bottom end as well as the cycle parts.

For the RR1000 this motor was tucked beneath fully-enclosing bodywork within a skeletal frame of chrome-moly tubing, which looked fragile if not delicate, which weighed in at a paltry 26lbs. In spite of appearances it was immensely strong through triangulation, and if you’ve never given frame strength a thought, it’s worth doing so now because it explains a few things later.

One of the strongest shapes you can possibly have is a triangle: it’s as close to a self-supporting structure as you can get and any number of shapes can be made from joining two or more together. Take a cursory glance at a traditional bicycle, or even a pre-swing-arm motorcycle – which is basically a motorised bicycle with an engine sitting where the pedals used to go – and you’ll see the simplicity and the strength of two triangles with a single common side. The real joy of triangulation is that you can rely on the structure for strength and can therefore use lighter materials. The same can’t be said of a parallelogram, which is more accommodating for the shape of an integrated engine/gearbox unit, but gets its strength through the use of heavy-gauge steel.

The fully-faired Buell weighed in at 395lb, which compared to 480lbs of naked XR1000. Stick forty bags of sugar in a strong box and lift it: that’s roughly the difference in weight between the two bikes. When you consider that the engine alone weighs in at around 200lbs, and that the Sportster’s got a relatively light chassis – in Harley terms – using the solid mount motor as a stressed member for additional strength, it doesn’t take much imagination to realise the achievement.

The RR1000’s motor didn’t contribute to the strength of the lightweight frame. It couldn’t, it wasn’t actually mounted directly to it. While at Harley-Davidson Erik Buell had been involved on the FXR project, and he put that experience to good use here. Mounted by rubber at the headstock and gearbox, and controlled in its lateral movement by rose-jointed tie rods, the engine could only move in one plane, forwards and backwards, hence "uniplanar". That was essential to keep the wheels in line because the swing-arm, and therefore the rear wheel, is not attached to the frame at all, but to the gearbox – as is the case on Dyna Glides and Norton’s Commandos.

Unfortunately a triangulated frame doesn’t meet everyone’s idea of pretty, which is why it generally didn’t catch on outside the technocratic world of racing until Ducati picked it up for road use.

Something else that wasn’t immediately obvious beneath the bodywork is how everything else worked. We knew the exhaust was in there somewhere, because it wasn’t sticking out the back, but what about everything else? This is where mass centralisation comes in. Think of a pendulum. The further from the pivot or the heavier the weight, the slower the pendulum swings, the closer to the pivot or lighter the weight, the quicker it swings. Think of the road being the pivot point of the pendulum and the bike being the pendulum itself. Quick is good. So, if you’ve got to have it, make it light and get the weight where it can do least harm. Closer to the pivot: between the wheel spindles.

Apart from the obvious one, the engine, which bits are heavy? Rear suspension units and exhausts, so tuck them in tight to the main mass.

Easiest place? Underneath the motor itself. It meant raising the motor a little to fit it underneath, which raised the centre of gravity, but as the majority of the weight of the motor was based around the crank and gearbox, it looked worse than it was.

The rear suspension caused something of a stir, not only because it was in an unorthodox place, but because it was set up to work in tension, working directly off the swingarm itself without the complexity of linkages.

The majority of RR1000s ended up with collectors, but a few made it to the track and not without success.
The 1987 RR1000 became the 1988 RR1200 when the Evo motor of the XLH1200 replaced the XR1000, but our story really begins with the RS1200 of the following year: the Westwind. An RR1200 with a little less bodywork, a weird dualseat – their first (dualseat, that is, not weird dualseat) – and the motor on display for the first time.

It’s easy to be dismissive of the practice of fitting a production Harley motor to the 1200. It was different with the XR because that had won things, but an XLH1200? Okay, so it was the new Evo version, but it was still a streetbike motor, but then Buell had already proved that his expertise wasn’t limited to the chassis.
Production numbers of this road-going bike were small but were up compared to the race bikes. They weren’t cheap but they were revolutionary – and they were hand-built and you can’t make hand-built bikes in significant numbers. It’s reckoned that no more than fifty RR1000s and sixty-nine RR1200s ever left the plant. With the Westwind, numbers were up, producing 102 by 1990, and another 125 RS1200/5s with 5-speed boxes – which coincided, unsurprisingly, with the release of the 5-speed Sportsters in 1991 – and a further forty single-seat RSS1200s. Speaking of 1991, that year saw Buell became the first manufacturer to fit inverted (upside-down) forks to a production bike.

Since the RR1000 Erik had been supplied with motors from Harley-Davidson’s production lines which his technicians at Mukwonago had stripped, tweaked and reassembled to Buell’s tolerances, and Harley had been looking on, seeing what their former employee was doing, and considering a speculative venture into the sportsbike market. Their own post-buyback traditional market was well-founded but nervous of fundamental changes – there were still rumblings over the radical Evo – and an involvement with another company was a much safer way to enter the Sports market than sticking their own name onto the side of a different breed of bikes. In 1993 they bought a 49% stake in Buell, which became the Buell Motorcycle Company, and moved it to East Troy.

The fruit of their union was first seen in 1995: the S2 Thunderbolt. The beginning of Buell’s modern age, although the lineage was clear, looking like a tidied-up RS1200 with yet less bodywork.
With a greater concentration on road use, the aerodynamics became less critical, and with one founding principle redundant, the technical trilogy needed another pillar: and we started to hear about how low unsprung weight was desirable.

In the most basic terms, a low unsprung weight means light wheels. Suspension is partly there for rider comfort, but it is also there to keep the wheels under control – basically on the tarmac – and lighter wheels are easier to control. They track the road surface better, spending more time where they can steer, brake and accelerate more efficiently. The wheel is the common reference point, but in reality it includes disk rotors, callipers, lower fork legs and tyres. This manifested itself in the large single 340mm disc with six-piston front calliper, and relatively lightweight 3-spoke wheels. The large swept area of the bigger disk providing enough metal to dissipate the heat of heavy braking in road use, while shaving a few pounds off the assembly. There is less to do at the back other than fit light wheels, and provide enough rear braking to meet the lesser requirement with the smallest practical disk and calliper.

Bags were added in 1995 to make the S2T Thunderbolt, and moving it towards Sports Tourer country, but while it broadened the scope of the manufacturer’s range it didn’t enjoy quite the same following, and was eventually available on special order only – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The S2 Thunderbolt was a pivotal model in terms of the company as well as its product. Gone was the cottage industry, and the scale of the operation went up a couple of gears. From production runs in hundreds, the company started producing in thousands. In his first ten years, Buell’s operation had sold less than 400 motorcycles, in the next two years, with Harley’s backing, it sold more than two thousand Thunderbolts alone. Buell had arrived. To celebrate the importance of the model, Buell contacted all known 1995/96 Thunderbolt owners offering them the opportunity to register their bike as a Signature Series, complete with a special timing cover in a limited edition display box, and a certificate by way of a "thank you" for their support.

If people were concerned that the S2T represented a Harleyfication of the Buell, they didn’t have to wait long to have their minds set at rest, for while the touring Thunderbolt might have been too sensible for some, the next model wasn’t.

Late 1996 saw the introduction of a leaner, meaner, streetfighting machine: the S1 Lightning. A seat you wouldn’t volunteer to go touring on and a small tank that further removed the temptation to try were bolted to a modified frame that would better suit a production line. The swingarm-mounted rear mudguard was just begging to be taken off and thrown away, leaving the minimal seat unit to carry the relocated registration plate. It was brutal, uncompromising and while not coining the term "Streetfighter" it was certainly the first factory attempt at one and it turned a few heads. It was an immediate hit, and outsold everything that had gone before.

The Lightning’s frame mods were combined with a restyling of the Thunderbolt’s bodywork to turn the S2 into the S3, which continued to sell in reasonable numbers but the Lightning became the bike that people associated with Buell. There was nothing else like it on the road. You could argue that there still isn’t – did someone at the back say "Bulldog"? In Yamaha’s dreams. You could perhaps get away with "Monster", but it would make an interesting debate.

Something came close to it in 1997, but it was another Buell. Keeping to the schedule of a new model per year, Buell introduced a base model: the M2 Cyclone. It was a less compromising model, lacked the upside-down forks, tacho and hooligan stance, but gained a half-decent seat and retained the wheels and brakes. It lacked none of the urgency of the Lightning, having an identical engine which was, by then, an 86hp / 79ftlb version of the XL1200. For comparison, the XLH1200 was delivering 58hp / 65ftlb, but that was about to change.

For 1998 Harley and Buell teams released high output versions of their respective 1200s. Harley fitted twin plug heads and got 61hp / 66ftlb for the second season of the XL1200S, Buell built the Thunderstorm and got 93hp / 87ftlb. In all cases, the Buells developed their power at higher revs than the Sportsters but with the improved frame and rubber-mountings, they could use those revs more comfortably. Couple the increased power with the lower weight – by 1998 the Buell weighed in at 425lb to the Harley’s 500lb – and the bikes could hardly be more different.

The Thunderstorm was slotted into a special edition of the Lightning: the White Lightning. Available only in white, which could easily have been the kiss of death to the new model, it still sold in good quantities though I suspect it might be that the figures for the S1W include Lightning Strike models which were in more appropriate, if less conspicuous colours.

The Lightning Strike coincided with the launch of the X1 Lightning in 1999 and could easily be seen as a way to clear the decks of obsolete parts in anticipation of the new model … well, frames. It was another landmark year. Harley bought another 49% of Buell, DDFI Fuel Injection was introduced on the new Lightning and S3 Thunderbolt – giving them a 1.5hp advantage over the normally aspirated Cyclone – and the X1 got a modified rear sub-frame and relatively sensible seat. The Cyclone developed alongside, gaining a markedly bigger seat and tank in ’99, and eventually getting a tacho in 2000, while the Thunderbolt was withdrawn except for special orders, from the UK completely.

The White Lightning reappeared briefly as an X1W, but they were more a colour scheme than a performance enhancement and are easily spotted by their blue ceramic-coated exhaust headers … and all-over white paint.

In 2001, when Harley announced the V-Rod, Buell announced the XB9R Firebolt – a new generation short-stroke, sub-litre engine in a wholly different but no less radical frame – and pulled the tube-frame models with indecent haste. The 2002 catalogue showed them still, but the dealers floors cleared more quickly than was anticipated, which lead the way to the reuse of the Lightning name for the XB9S. But for the recent announcement of the arrival of the XB12R and XB12S we’d be bang up to date but there is far too much in the beam-framed models to do them justice in a closing paragraph, so that’ll be for another time: ideally, once we’ve had time to appraise their impact.

	RW 750 1983: The Road Warrior. A 2-stroke square four originally designed by Barton in North Wales, but with the engine and chassis redeveloped by Buell to create a pure race bike for use in the AMA F1 Class ... just before they abandoned it for Superbikes.
	RR 1000 1987: The RR1000 Battletwin was based on a project for Bell/Vetter to show what an American Sport Bike could be – they wanted a roadgoing RW750, Buell and HOG wanted an XR1000 based Battle of the Twins bike to succeed Lucifer’s Hammer.
	RR 1200 1988: As the supply of the XR1000 motors dried up, the Battletwin adopted the new Evolution XL1200 motor with some mods, but retained the exceptionally steamlined race-developed bodywork that was then his trademark.
	RS 1200 1989: The track-oriented RR1200 became a streetbike with the RS1200 Westwind, and the later RS1200/5 with a 5-speed box. The bodywork was abbreviated, the engine was visible, the seat was horrible – perhaps Willie G found a kindred spirit.
	RSS 1200 1991: The sleeker seat on the RSS was a vast improvement over the RS visually, but was otherwise very similar.
	S2 Thunderbolt 1995: Having sold 49% of the company to Harley-Davidson, there was more money for development and production. The resulting offspring of the relationship was the S2 Thunderbolt.
	S1 Lightning 1996: The Hololigan Torque Monster arrives and creates the mould and image for all Buells to come – and that’s before the Thunderstorm motor.
	S3 Thunderbolt 1996: Factory production processes, introduced for the S1, lead to a redesigned frame and smoother bodywork for the S2, which becomes the S3.
	M2 Cyclone Mk1 1997: The third member of the gang, the Cyclone arrives: less compromising, more comfortable and a base model for the range.
	M2 Cyclone Mk2 1999: The Cyclone gets a bigger tank, bigger seat and an exhaust that doesn’t need painting, and will get a tacho in 2000.
	S3 Thunderbolt Mk2 1999: The S3 was further enhanced with the addition of DDFI injection with the arrival of the X1, but kept its designation this time.
	S3 TT 1999: Buell’s bagger was far too sensible for the market that Buell was attracting and was available by special order only.
	X1 Lightning Fuel Injection and a modified tail unit and less obtrusive airbox pick the X1 out as the ultimate tube frame hooligan bike.
	The last of the tube frames: The X1W lines up with a few friends, but the beam framed XBs are already in development.