BACK in the late seventies, American Erik Buell abandoned his dreams of becoming a rock musician, got himself an engineering degree and landed himself a job as a test engineer with Harley Davidson.

Racing was his passion and as a leading privateer, riding mostly Japanese machines, his skills on the track allowed him to compete on a level playing field with such icons of the time as Randy Mamola and Kork Ballington.

His problem was that the bikes were built by Harley rivals and this was frowned upon by his employers.

Undaunted, he took to the drawing board with plans to design and create his own racing motorcycle to compete in the AMA Formula 1 road race series.

He designed a tubular steel frame, dropped into it a British-built Barton 750cc two-stroke square four engine and named it the RW750.

In 1983, after a rule change rendered the RW750 ineligible in its class, he quit racing, passed up a promotion with Harley Davidson and from a barn on his Milwaukee farm began production of his own sportsbike... this time for the street.

A deal with Harley saw their 1200cc Sportster engine fitted into the Buell chassis and the successful combination spawned a partnership with his old Milwaukee colleagues.

Harley bought 49 per cent of the Buell shares and with it a foray into the sports bike market. The Buell American Motorcycle Company was born.

A move to bigger premises saw production rocket from 100 bikes a year to around 700 and since then. Latest figures show over 200 employees and in Europe alone sales of around 2,400 bikes in 1999.

Harley now own 98 per cent of Buell American Motorcycles and Erik Buell with his remaining 2 per cent is retained as chairman, with a big input into future designs.

Story date: Wednesday 09 February

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.