The digital ink is still wet on news of American Suzuki declaring bankruptcy and shutting down its car business to focus on powersports and marine products, and now there’s more bad news for the Japanese manufacturer.

Suzuki announced it will close its motorcycle factory in Gijón, Spain, in March, 2013, shutting the company’s sole European production plant. The factory has been producing motorcycles and scooters for Suzuki since 1984, with the manufacturer taking 100% ownership of the factory.

According to Spanish site Motoworld.es, the factory has been bleeding money, accumulating more than 30 million euros (US$38.4 million) in losses over the last four years as Spain’s economy as a whole also took a tumble. Continue Reading »

Yamaha is reportedly planning to open a new manufacturing facility in Pakistan.

According to the Associated Press of Pakistan, Yamaha would invest $150 million in the new 50 acre facility, to be located in Karachi, Pakistan’s main seaport and financial hub. The plant would produce motorcycles for the Pakistani market, as well as models to be exported to other Commonwealth of Independent States nations.

The proposed facility would reprotedly produce motorcycles equipped with water-cooled engines, electronic fuel injection, and automatic transmission, and meet European standards. Yamaha currently offers models such as the Yama4 pictured above, a carbureted 100cc four-stroke priced at 72,500 Pakistani rupees (US$840).

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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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Update: Read the review now on motorcycle.com

Perhaps only Ducati’s street-legal MotoGP carbon-copy Desmosedici has received as much anticipation as Aprilia’s all-new RSV4 Factory. A four cylinder Vee from Aprilia is significant largely because the Italian bike maker has dealt almost exclusively with V-Twins. The big deal here is that Aprilia was able to squish two more cylinders into roughly the same space normally occupied by a narrow V-Twin, thereby keeping the bike slim and light.

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