Why won't the U.S. make a decent sport bike?

Since the Japanese have come out with Sport Bikes and Race Replicas for the street, the motorcycle death rate per accident has gone up about about fourfold. Roughly four times more people are being killed on a per accident basis *because* of Sport Bikes and Race Replicas.

American manufactures obviously have no need to add to the death toll, no need to assist you in your suicide.

we can't make a jap type sportbike because of cost, our unions cause it to cost too much to hire people to build them so cheap. But we could make a higher end bike that would appeal to some. Make the bike 25% better but 50% more expensive, like Harley (numbers are pulled out of my ***...) some people will pay the higher price for a bike with better fit and finish.

However, Buell should stick with 2 cylinders. Ducati does it and they're fine. Thats what a Buell is, let it be.

edit: some people will also pay more for the "made in America" label... i would if it was reasonable and the bike wasn't a joke in the sportbike world, like buell

AMA SBK: Eslick & Buell Dominate SportBike

Danny Eslick and the GEICO Powersports Bruce Rossmeyers/RMR Buell 1125R proved to be an unstoppable combination in Saturday's AMA Pro Daytona SportBike final at Auto Club Speedway.

Eslick powered into the lead off the rolling start and was never headed, pulling a massive gap back to a terrific dogfight to determine the runner-up position. His 2.510-second margin of victory wasn't fully indicative of his complete control of the contest as he slowed to wheelie all the way down the front straight past the checkered flag.

The win was the first of Eslick's AMA career, and the first for Buell in a premier class. The triumph was decisive enough to quickly spark talk of the category's regulation policingdue following the next round at Road Atlanta.

Monster Energy Attack Kawasaki's Jamie Hacking came out on top of a four-rider tussle for the second, working his way up from fifth to second in less than a lap with just a handful of circulations remaining.

Eslick and Hacking were joined on the podium by Team M4 Suzuki's Martin Cardenas, who beat teammate Jason DiSalvo and Erion Honda's Jake Zemke to the flag.

Graves Yamaha's Josh Herrin ran with the pack for second early before fading back to six. He was followed by Zemke's teammate, Chris Peris, Factory Aprilia Millennium Technologies's Chaz Davies, Yamaha-mounted Steve Rapp, and Herrin's teammate, Tommy Aquino.

The United States is behind in technology...who came out with the Prius again?

The friggin Yamaha R1 has a vertically variable fuel injection system, cable-less throttle (run by a computer) and selectable power curves.

Um, we make that how?

By the time we figure out, design, approve, and build just one of those features it's going to be old, and Yamaha or another Japanese manufactuer will have a new feature (or two) out. I don't think we could keep up if we, the US, could get our heads above water in the ever-changing sportbike world.

We would have to make something really cool and crazy. Like a turbo-rotary powered superbike or something that people are going to gobble up- like a 250cc sportbike for beginners.

Yeah, we got Chevy, Dodge, and Ford Hybrids now, but the Japanese have had it out first, cheaper.

You never know with the economy.

Because the American manufacturers can see the writing on the wall. The days of allowing the motorcycle manufacturers to sell racing motorcycles for street use will soon be coming to an abrupt halt. If the government doesn't stop the sale of these type of motorcycles, the insurance companies will.

The only qualification you need to ride one of these street legal racing bikes is a large enough checkbook to purchase one. And they aren't even all that expensive compared to buying a car.

These little death traps kill many young riders every year compared to the lower horsepower standard and cruiser bikes.

So why would the American manufacturers want to put any effort into a bike that they will be forced to discontinue in a few years?

And yes, there is documentation to prove there is a higher percentage of motorcycle deaths on sport bikes compared to other motorcycles, if you bother to look.

good question. let me ask you this. if i was to give a bike design (car, or even boat) are you willing to build it for me for say $1 per hour. and work fast, be there on time 6 days a week. thats assuming the parts cost really cheap, since say the steel, plastic, rubber etc companies costs are cheap since they pay their employees $1 per hour.

labor cost is very high, so is the cost of living. and not to mention taxes. if all of those things are cheap, the bike would be cheap.

the know how is there ( world wide) i am sure you looked at a bike and said why didn't they do it this way or that way. this shows you know better, but your rate is much higher than the Japs, because your cost of living and cost of material is very high compared to other contries.

look at motorola, they make one sample phone in the states, test it out, then ship the technology to chins, india, and have the phones built there and shipped back here to resale, and it still is cheaper than to manufacture it here.

Dimo,

I want to see these so called stats that say motorcycle deaths are up because of Sport bikes. Fourfold of what?? Compared to how many gun shot deaths, alcohol deaths, drug deaths, heart attacks, cancer, crossing the street, peanut butter, bee stings, asthma?

There have been some American companies but as you say they are not really that of Japanese or Italian bikes. It seems that "Made in America" brings a hefty price tag.

http://www.fischer1.com/

I saw how it is. The Harley guys (other than myself) blame the bikes. The sport bike riders (or perhaps rational thinkers) blame the person on the bike.

The solution is simple. Ban everything. You know what those sport bikers will do after they ban sport bikes? They're going to buy power cruisers like the V-Max, Valkyrie, V-Rod and the like and RACE THOSE. They outlaw anything over 500ccs. They're then going to RACE THOSE 500s with turbo chargers/Nitrous kits on them.

It isn't the bikes, you cretins. It's the people riding the damn things that are screwing up. When you hand a rational man a machine gun (a weapon of excess) and say "Here. Take this." he holds it, looks at it and then uses it to it's designed intent. (Shooting bowling pins or something, I dunno.) You give it to a crazy *** MOFO and he goes into a USPS location and fires until he has no more ammo, or dies first.

Jesus Christ.

Americans (in general) value form over function. There's a great market for cruisers so there's no reason to put a lot of money into R&D for a sport bike. HD is still trying to spiff up the V Rod to give it curb appeal.

HD is Buell, so HD controls Buell, HD tells Buell they won't use anything but their engine. "Modify it how you want, but you're only ever going to make a 2 cylinder engine. We're Harley, that's out image. We won't let you run an I or V 4.

As for why we don't copy the Japanese. Sure, man. I could see that. This prideful *** country that 'invented' the motorcycle DARING to 'copy' off of the Euros or Japanese? There'd be shotgun blasts in homes all across the country from suicidally depressed HD fans having their favorite company 'stoop' to 'copying' someone else. (As if nothing in this world is allowed to be refined. And if it is, you take the refined product, further refine it, and take a crap on the people you took it off of.) Just look at how poorly the V-Rod sells to see how HD and its riders view any motorcycle engine not made/designed in America.

The simple fact of that matter is that so long as such a high percentage of motorcycle riders are 40+ (90% of those are Cruiser/Chopper/Naked riders) and so long as the HD name means 'rough, rugged, don't take no **** biker' there simply isn't a market for American sport bikes. Buell doesn't sell excessively well because they can't squeeze much more out of that engine (and many of their designs just look like YUK, IMHO.) but even if they or a company started slamming out inline or V-4 they still have half a dozen other sport bike companies to deal with much more refined specs to deal with. American sport bike is an uphill battle for anyone that wished to wage that war. So it's simple. They don't. (Or if they do no one wants them.) When you go to a bike night how many 1125CRs do you see in comparison to R1, R6, Gix 6, Gix 7.5, Gix 1k, ZX-6, ZX-10, CBR600RR, CBR1000RR?

Exactly.

Your borderline racist HD member will come on here saying "You just leave them Japs copy things. We innovate. They copy." Without realizing that it's the Japanese culture to take the best things around the world, and modify them how they like. Just like baking apple pie is American. Taking things that they marvel over and altering them to their liking is very rooted in their culture. ...and isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery?

Dimo- That's crap. Honda has had motorcycles in the US for 50 years, and it damn sure wasn't Soichiro Honda laughing in 1959 at skyrocketing motorcycle deaths because he had Hondas in the US now. People dying on bikes the same way they're dying with guns. BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE FU***NG STUPID! You outlaw guns and motorcycles and I bet knifings and vehicle accidents on Quads or Sport cars go up. So long as there is potential to kill themselves on adrenaline rushes people will do it!

Blaming the bikes for killing people. Great. I can see the Stephen King movie now "Karen" starring a rampaging Suzuki GSX-R 1000 going around running people over with no passenger on the thing.

I like how dude points to an article to prove his point and the article has in it "It’s the young guys on sportbikes not boomers on Harleys …" See the words 'young guys' in there, dude?