HOT BIKE: Describe yourself in three words.
BM: Son of a motorcycle maniac. Is that not what you expected? I mean, my dad [Bill Jr.] was a crazy motorcyclist that I just watched my whole life. He rides all the time. 

HB: Talk about how you got into the motorcycle industry. How did that come about?
BM: My dad was a motorcycle deal maker back in the ‘70s, doing stuff with Dixie Distributing, helping spin off lots of big deals that Harry Denune was buying. Then in 2004, my dad was trying to buy and restart the Indian factory. So as we were doing that, we ended up buying all the Indian assets, and I was attending all the V-twin shows, meeting the big players like Bruce Rossmeyer, Fred Fox, Roland Sands and a bunch of other industry people. I just got well connected through that deal and started doing deals with all the big OEMs and distributors, and that eventually led to us buying Buell.

HB: Have you always been a passionate motorcyclist?
BM: My whole life. My dad put me on a bike when I was 4 and taught me how to ride. We had a ton of woods, about 70 acres, right next to where our cottage was up north, so we’d go up there in the summer. When I was 5, he’d essentially just throw me on a bike and say, “go for it.” And that freedom of just ripping the throttle and going wherever I wanted was pretty crazy at that age. My dad loved to go fast, he loved to rip. He had a lot of bikes and ended up building a huge collection. When I was about 5, he probably had 10 bikes. When I was 20, he had 120 bikes, and some of the rarest bikes in the world. He let me ride and test them all. He would get a bike, fix it up, get it running great, then maybe he’d do some mods to it, and then he’d say, “Hey, take this one for a ride.” And I would take all of them out on these rips. So I got to ride pretty much every bike almost ever made from when I was 10 years old till I was 25. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning about all these brands and products and what made all these different bikes successful or failures. And, you know, we took all that information and rolled it into what we’re doing at Buell.

HB: Knowing  that your dad had so many cool bikes. Do you have a favorite?
BM: That is a tough question. Right now my favorite bike is definitely the Super Cruiser. We just unveiled a bunch of [Super Cruiser] customs that we’ve been building in the [Buell] factory. Jacob, our race tech and special builds lead, and I were coming up with stuff we wanted to do on the prototype and we just unveiled a bunch of cool stuff: a bagger, a flat tracker, an off road, hill-climb adventure bike–that thing’s gonna be sick. I kind of want to take it down to Baja and just rip the coast on it. So that platform is definitely number one in my heart right now. But when I was younger, my favorite was probably the CBX six cylinder just because the engine freaking rips. The Indian 101 Scout was always something I loved to ride, too. And any go-fast bikes. 

HB: Who or what inspires you?
BM: I’m most inspired by people that just send it. You know, the customizers, the racers, the people that are doing wild stuff because they love it, not necessarily what they think everyone’s gonna like. I mean, you go through all the stuff you see in the magazines, like Hot Bike and everything on social media, and there’s some pretty sick stuff that people are doing. And it’s not just motorcycles. People are doing wild stuff with cars, houses or architecture with a lot of style. But the motorcycle space is the ultimate customization platform. If someone’s gonna build a custom home, that’s freaking crazy money and I don’t think they’re as fun to customize as motorcycles. Keeping track of what everyone’s doing on the custom scene is inspiring too. 

HB: What’s your proudest moment?
BM: Oh, my gosh. Probably my kids. They’re all doing so well in life. They’re all good kids. They like hanging out with their mom and dad too. They like to have fun and we let them be a little crazy, but yeah, they are what I’m most proud of for sure.

HB: Any recent life lessons?
BM: I’m a person that pushes to do things fast, and I’ve learned a lot about that in the last two years. So I’ve tried to make sure that we take our time with bringing this bike into production, because we want everything to be really dialed in, right? With all the work I did back in the 2000s, I’d see companies force a product before it was ready, and they have problems. We’re making sure we’re doing it right, that everything’s ready. I think that’s important for what we’re doing as a company, and especially for our riders. 

HB: Favorite place on planet Earth?
BM: My hammock at my cottage on Lake Michigan. We bought this old cabin and fixed it up, but that little, you know, $40 hammock is just the best place on Earth.

HB: Besides the Super Cruiser launch, what else are you currently working on that you’d like to share?
BM: The Super Cruiser launch is obviously something important now. And the team is kicking butt on it. Jacob and I are able to start looking at some of the cool new stuff we want to do next and what we want the company to have in our product lineup. So it’s important for us for all the new stuff that we do two or three years from now is really top-notch high-performance, but also has a lot of Americana to it. With the new Super Cruiser, we’ve been able to increase our US supplier content to just about 70 percent. When we do future products, we want to keep American jobs using American suppliers as part of that. But we have some cool stuff in the works, like this bagger that we just released, the flat tracker that we just showed like all this stuff on the Super Cruiser platform. Yeah, those are just ideas off of that platform. We have some other platforms that we’re starting to work on that will be super fun, but you’ll just have to wait and see.

HB: What do you see in this industry’s crystal ball?
BM: I see people customizing the Super Cruiser and using it in all kinds of cool ways! I think with all the stuff that’s going on in the United States right now, there’s going to be a huge push for more American products. And we want to help lead that over the next five years. I think that’s going to be a big part of where America’s going with motorcycles. We’re going to give the American riders what they want. We hope to get bikes over to Europe at some point too, but we’re building American bikes for American riders. I think there are a ton of young people that are riding electrics, so, there’ll be some shifts there with the younger riders and what they want to ride. I mean, you see a lot of them are stunting their Super 73s, ripping wheelies… They’re doing all kinds of tricks. And I feel fortunate that the Super Cruiser really fits into that market pretty easily when they’re ready to go up to something bigger. We’re light and nimble, but also, like, we want to give some stuff to play with when they’re 17 and 18. I think it is part of where the industry is going too.

HB: Anything else you’d like to add?
BM: Make sure to renew your subscription to Hot Bike! They have the coolest content on the planet, and Jordan and the team are fucking awesome, so it’s our favorite place to go for motorcycles.

 HB: Awesome. Love that. Thank you. Raddest answer yet, dude. We appreciate it!