by Ben Purvis from https://www.cycleworld.com Indian firm Bajaj may be bringing back the classic American marque. For a brief moment in the late 1990s the name Excelsior-Henderson was one of the hottest stories in motorcycling – a brand that was resurrected as a high-tech rival to Harley-Davidson after decades in the grave. Even if you don’t remember the furor over Excelsior in 1997, you already know how the story ends. The fact that those Excelsiors remain vanishingly rare more than two decades later reveals that the plan didn’t quite come together as envisioned. Just two years after unveiling the first bike since 1931 to wear that storied badge, Excelsior-Henderson 2.0 ended up closing its doors as well. But now it seems that the brand might be set to rise from the grave once more, this time courtesy of Indian manufacturing giant Bajaj. Bajaj might not be a name that registers on your radar like Honda or Harley-Davidson, but it’s a behemoth of a company with a 75-year history of its own and a string of subsidiaries. It’s India’s second-largest bike company, after Hero, with the production capacity to manufacture 6,330,000 vehicles per year, most of them motorcycles. On top of that, Bajaj owns 48% of KTM, building KTMs and Husqvarnas in its plants in India, and it has a deal with Triumph to jointly develop and manufacture a new range of small to mid-sized machines in the near future. In short, Bajaj is one of the biggest players in the worldwide motorcycle market, and now it’s planning to relaunch the classic Excelsior-Henderson marque. The news has yet to be officially announced, but Bajaj has already applied for trademark rights in various countries to use the Excelsior-Henderson name and logo on motorcycles, parts and clothing. It’s understood to have bought the
