Buell Motorcycles is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harley-Davidson and the only American crotch-rocket manufacturer, as far as I know. I've always wondered why H-D keeps the brand alive; they make very little money from it, spend next to nothing on marketing and I can't remember the last time I saw one on the street that wasn't being driven by a Harley or Buell employee. They had a little entry-level bike called the Buell Blast, and like most Buell products, few were sold.

They decided to dump the model, and created what seems to me to be an incredibly stupid alternative to the usual strategy of allowing failed products to fade off quietly into oblivion. See it here (http://www.buell.com/en_us/bikes/blast/).

I was motorcycle shopping about 10 years ago and looked a Buells in comparison to Triumph and BMW.

I found that:
1) you got a lot less performance for the money with the Buell
2) The sales people at the couple dealerships I hit didn't much care about selling you a Buell.
3)You got a lot less bells and whistles with the Buell (at that time a tach was extra on most models, as I remember)

PS - I didn't buy a bike at all because the garage I wanted to rent in my apartment complexvto store it was crap.