Hero MotoCorp’s worries continue to spoil its night’s dreams. In a shocking move, Eric Buell Racing yesterday filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 128. This means that the company would soon be put up for bids. EBR which shut down last night, leaves 126 employees without a job, and they have 20 million dollars in outstanding liabilities. As of now, even their website has been pulled down.
Remnants of Buell Motorcycle Co, which was owned by Harley Davidson (and later dropped by them in 2009 to cut costs) Eric Buell Racing came up from the ashes thanks to the funding by the founder Eric Buell and the 49.2 per cent stake owned by Hero MotoCorp worth 25 million dollars! The company had been doing fine on the race tracks and had even opened its doors in Europe.
As per a report in JSOnline, the company had recently even patented a 400 horsepower gas-electric motorcycle engine! In fact, they were also helping Hero MotoCorp in Research and Development, and preparing to market Hero products in the US, especially the HX 250R.
Here’s what Eric Buell had to say after the announcement:
“The turn we recently took, after we thought we were moving forward, was unexpected. We thought we had secured funding, but in the end, we were not able to get the funding in place. Therefore we need to do the best we can under the circumstances for all parties in interest.”
It is not known what has led to this sudden announcement. Hero was depending on EBR for technical support and in fact, their latest 2014 Karizma twins and other products had a lot of EBR design sharings, apart from possible technical help as well. We are keeping a close vigil on this and will update you as and when we get more information.
