Motorcycle.com’s own Kevin Duke recently took a tour of Erik Buell’s “little” garage where Buell motorcycles are dreamed up and created and it looks like a mighty fine place to work!

The Buell factory is a quite small operation but quite technically advanced, using high-tech testing facilities and computer programs to design, build, and test out their bikes.  There’s only 170 people on staff!

Just 170 employees are responsible for the entire operation, and Mr. Buell joked during the tour, “Ducati has more people in their race department than I have in my whole company!”

Holy crap!  I bet all those 170 employees are total gear-heads, dedicated to their work. It also looks like they are hiring!  Harley-Davidson, their major partner/investor, seem to be in charge of the hiring by the looks of it, but I’ve included all the job positions available in Wisconsin, where the Buell factory is located. I’m betting those spots are for Buell.

See the rest of the article for possible job positions at Buell, Motorcycle.com’s video tour of the factory, and head over to their “Buell Factory Tour” written report to get details.

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Wow, Honda, that’s quite an achievement!

2009 marks Honda’s fiftieth year of operations in the U.S. Our success in the global marketplace is the result of our commitment to continued investment in America’s future. That’s been our philosophy since we opened our doors here in 1959. It’s what we believe in. It’s what you expect, and it’s why we will continue to grow in America.

We thank our customers for the support and trust they’ve shown us, and look forward to challenging ourselves to create new products and services that bring value to our customers and society during the next 50 years.

The official day was Thursday, June 11.

They have a pretty nice little historical time-line slide show on their website that is really quite interesting so go check it out.

Honda has also thrown together a bit of a “throw-back” documentary on itself and shoved it up on youtube.

Check the full post for the video and Honda’s announcement.

There are few motorcycle icons within pop culture that have endured as vividly as that of the late, great Steve McQueen. A man who was at one time the highest paid actor in Hollywood, he avoided the limelight in favor of immersing himself within his passion for motorcycles. Never afraid of getting dirty, McQueen was at his happiest flogging a bike around the track with fellow racers or tinkering with the machines himself.

Here at Motorcycle.com, we spend an awful lot of time searching out and covering stories about the motorcycles that will shape the future of the industry. Sometimes it is also a good idea to turn around and look back at just how far we’ve come. The first known motorcycle in existence was constructed back in 1885 by German inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach near Stuttgart. Essentially a motorized wooden bicycle, the Reitwagen, (riding car) as it was called, was the first petroleum-powered transportation device.