On the topic of mass centralization, how do you feel about other sportbike manufacturers following your approach of late?

It's all good for the riders because all that stuff makes the bikes better and more fun to ride. The people who are putting the mufflers under the seat, I first did that in 1985. Any patents that I had were long gone anyhow, they're only good for 17 years.

Mike Ciccotto aboard the Buell XBRR in the 2006 Daytona 200.

What is your take on the importance of racing to the brand?

I come from a racing background and I think that racing needs to be in the DNA of any sportbike company. Our approach has been - for a long time - that we didn't want to do a factory team. Our goal was to support privateer racing with contingency money and to make things available to dealers and distributors. It's more fun if those guys are in charge of their own destiny.

We don't want to have a situation where we have a factory team and we don't want that factory team beaten by privateers. I don't want that happening. I want the bikes to be in the hands of the riders. Having been a privateer racer myself, I was frustrated by the companies that wouldn't let you get the good stuff. For us, everybody gets the good stuff, there is no team at home taking away the good stuff. And it's working for us.

At first, people were like, "Why don't you guys go racing with a factory team?" But we have more and more private teams. We've won U.S. Thunderbike titles with different teams every year, we've won Canadian Thunder. We don't dominate - some years we win, some we don't. But we're really in dead serious competition with the big manufacturers. Maybe if we get big enough, we'd run a factory team, but I don't know when that would be.

And how is racing important to the development of your road-going bikes?

We always build race versions of our bikes, fundamentally. We use guys like Dave Estok and Darren James to provide advice on development. We have a good crew internally, too - guys like [AMA racer] Shawn Higbee, who actually works for Buell.

Dave Estok (1)