The story
The company opened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1991, and after a brief move to San Francisco, California, the next year, moved to a prototype shop in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1993. The company's first motorcycle rolled off the production line there on November 11, 1994. Over 500 first generation Hellcat models were built from 1996 to 2001. After going bankrupt in 2001, Confederate recovered in 2003 and produced a second generation of Hellcats, about 75 total.
After the severe factory damage in August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina interrupted production, Confederate moved its corporate headquarters and assembly operations to a building in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Production resumed after the reorganization and move in early 2006, with an announcement in May of their $5 million expansion plans for production of a third, more affordable, model
Confederate Motor Co. sold 37 bikes in 2008 and anticipated the sale of 30 bikes in 2009, due to the recession. Even though Confederate's buyers are too rich to be affected by the economic downturn, company founder Matt Chambers said during the recession, "it was very fashionable to not be buying a high-end luxury product like ours."
In 2013 the company moved to a larger facility in Birmingham. Confederate produced 130 G3 Hellcats. Confederate has launched a G2 Fighter and has plans to launch a G2 Wraith.
At the August 2017 Quail Motorcycle Gathering, Confederate's President Matt Chambers said the Confederate name would be changed to Curtiss, and the company would switch to electric motorcycles in partnership with established electric bike maker Zero Motorcycles. The new model is to be a high-powered cruiser called the Hercules, made in Zero's California facility, not the Birmingham, Alabama Confederate Motorcycle factory. Chambers said that the Civil War connotations of the Confederate name had cost the company business, and they "missed out on branding opportunities" because of it. The Curtiss Motorcycles name is a reference to aviation and motorcycle pioneer Glenn Curtiss. Chambers had defended the Confederate name and motto, "Art of Rebellion", as recently as June 2017, saying "the rebellion we're talking about is cerebral and spiritual and inside of you", connected with the ideas of Albert Camus or E. E. Cummings, and Southern principles Chambers is proud of, not their "unprincipled application", adding that he is "glad the South lost" the Civil War.
From Wikipedia’s article on Confederate Motors, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4