Hero MotoCorp ties up with North American Erik Buell Racing outfit for technology sourcing!

The world’s largest motorcycle maker, Hero MotoCorp, has tied up with North American racing outfit Erik Buell Racing for technology sharing. Erik Buell, a former Harley Davidson engineer, started off his own motorcycle firm, which was later acquired by Harley Davidson. After selling the Harley Davidson V-Twin engined Buell brand of motorcycles for a few years, the American motorcycle company folded up after its owner Harley shut it down. Ever since, Erik Buell has been racing a radical range of Buell motorcycles under the Erik Buell Racing(EBR) outfit.

Hero MotoCorp Logo

Hero MotoCorp’s tie up with Erik Buell Racing to source new technology for its motorcycles will not just include big capacity motorcycles, the kind that Buell specializes in, but will also use the technology sourced by Buell for smaller capacity offerings. Hero MotoCorp’s partnership with Erik Buell Racing is a long term arrangement, with the first product using EBR’s expertise set for a launch as early as 2013.

Hero MotoCorp's Pawan Munjal with Erik Buell Racing's Erik Buell

Hero MotoCorp will also enter the 2012 AMA Motorcycle Racing Championship in which Erik Buell Racing’s EBR1190RS motorcycle will be raced under the Hero banner. The partnership with Erik Buell Racing is Hero MotoCorp’s first major tie up after it chose to end its long time joint venture alliance with Japanese motorcycle giant, Honda, with which Hero had a very lucrative 26 year old joint venture.

Erik Buell Racing Logo

After it broke the joint venture with Honda, Hero MotoCorp has been aggressively expanding its in-house research and development wing. The push towards becoming self sufficient with its own research and development wing will continue and the tie up with EBR will not affect those efforts. Meanwhile, here’s what Pawan Munjal, Hero MotoCorp’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, has had to say about this latest development,

We are entering into a strategic partnership with Erik Buell Racing (EBR), which currently is more into high end and high performance racing bikes, as we are completely missing in this category of motorcycles. We have already started work on some of our existing products and also on completely new products. I would tend to say that by calendar 2013 (a product will be launched). As stated in the past, we will not replace the current technology (Honda’s) with just one technology source or technology company or partnership, but we are looking at multiple technology tie-ups to go for specialised technologies wherever available. Ultimately, the idea is to build our own R&D capabilities to match the best in the world.

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