A Wisconsin motorcycle company is shutting down yet again. The company, Erik Buell Racing, is headquartered in East Troy and is shutting its doors for a second time. The company went through a bankruptcy restructuring back in 2015.
EBR Motorcycles was the sequel to Buell Motorcycle Company, which was owned for a little over 10 years by Harley-Davidson Inc. Harley-Davidson dropped the brand from its line back in 2009.
Production operations began to wind down early in February. The company has said it will continue to review alternatives with interested investors.
The plant in East Troy had 170 employees before bankruptcy in 2015 forced it to end operations. The company filed for Chapter 128 receivership in Wisconsin then, leaving motorcycles unfinished on assembly lines.
At an auction in January 2016 EBR was acquired by a liquidation company from Grand Rapids, Michigan. The goal at the time was to continue manufacturing motorcycles while looking for new investors or a buyer for the company.
Production began again at EBR in early 2016 and a new bike was even introduced, the Black Lightning. The new bike was meant for city street riding at high performance rates. The announcement came in November 2016 and the new bike was to be made available to the public for purchase beginning in the spring of 2017.
With the new announcement, the manufacturing of all new bikes has been halted, but EBR will honor all warranties provide dealers with parts.
A statement from EBR said, “This difficult decision was based primarily on EBR facing significant headwinds with signing new dealers, which is key to sales and growth for a new company. In addition, EBR has had limited production in 2016 and 2017 that was under goal. The combination of slow sales and industry announcements of other major OEM brands closing or cutting production only magnified the challenges faced by EBR.”
An experienced bankruptcy attorney can answer all of your Chapter 128 questions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “EBR Motorcycles shutting down again,” Rick Barrett, Jan. 27, 2017
