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INDIAN SPECIAL
THE INDIAN RANGE INDIAN THUNDERSTROKE CHIEF When the covers came off the new Indians on the 3rd August at Sturgis, the wait was over. We had seen the motors a few months before but who could have second-guessed the rest? As it happens, most of us because there was no sense in creating a motor that was so obviously a tribute to the post ’40 Chief and slotting it into anything other than a post 1940-style motorcycle, but how that would manifest itself was another matter entirely. We anticipated two obvious opportunities: the base model that we now know as the Classic, and the Vintage with its fringed leather panniers building heavily on one aspect of a brand that was HarleyDavidson’s arch rival until the early fifties. In the event, we got three models, with Indian releasing its first hard bag tourer – the Chieftain – and while all of the styling cues were familiar, the underlying technology was anything but. Polaris have identified three founding principles in place for Indian: honouring the brand’s heritage; making it a premium motorcycle in every way, and instilling confidence in the brand after its years in the wilderness, and you can see all three at work in these first year motorcycles. Heritage speaks for itself. You only have to look at it to know it’s an Indian and while there are some out there who would deny Polaris’ right to Indian’s past, one word usually silences them: Triumph. As an American motorcycle proudly made in America, it is where it belongs, and the commitment of Polaris to the brand is solid. In terms of being a premium product, they’re not shy of using chrome as a standard finish anywhere they feel it is appropriate – in fact they make a point of justifying it as being what the market wants and as you look around the States, you can’t help feeling that they’re right. That does mean they will be on the shiny side but they are supremely confident about its quality and longevity, having put everything through strict testing regimes alongside competitor parts, and it has been laid on properly. But it’s also about premium performance: we were running US Spec bikes with 161.6Nm@3,000rpm: monumental torque that you really can feel on the road. International bikes will be down on that, at 139Nm@2,600rpm, but nothing that can’t be reversed and I can’t imagine the neighbours
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complaining about the American exhausts. Then there is the intangible: confidence. The Indian team are well aware of the ghosts they’ve got to lay to rest, but with Polaris’ engineering and the reputation of the Victory motor behind it, they’ve got most ends covered ... and a five year warranty from a multi-billion dollar Powersports company will help. That and the technical innovation that Polaris prides itself on. That’s easy to say, but what does it actually mean in practice? We covered the motor in depth in AmV62 but learned a few more details that are worth sharing because it gives an insight into the technical integrity of the company and the design. The Thunder Stroke 111’s semi-dry sump is key to a number of things that are core principles of the design: easy servicing, a low profile engine and a clean one. It meant they didn’t have to mess about finding space for an oil tank on the chassis, or plumb it in, and having made a remarkably compact engine, they had space behind the gearbox to hold the oil. Easy servicing? Drop two drain plugs – one each for the sump and the oil tank – fit a new filter, refit the drain plugs and pour five quarts of oil in: job
done. Tappets? Hydraulic. Primary chain tension? There isn’t one. Plugs? Oh, go on then. Indian call it a primary-less engine having dispensed with the need for a drive chain: it’s one thing less to adjust, and a massive amount of unbalanced weight – and noise – lost. They also put the alternator outboard of the drive gears, well away from the heat of the motor. Noise is a big thing on a motorcycle, and quite apart from paying great attention to the exhaust note, every cover needs to keep sound as well as oil in. This was never more apparent than with the double-glazed rocker boxes: removal of that faux finned cover reveals a less attractive cover over the valvegear beneath, and I’m delighted to say that it’s still a piece of cast metal beneath that layer of chrome. I’m expecting a race between Ness and RSD to come up with a choice of stylish outer rocker covers, or even a single rocker cover now that homologation and type approval have been dealt with! I finally got a tantalising glimpse of the bike under its covers on the stand at Sturgis, and got to see the cutaway engine for real – poking my fingers and lens into the places I’d really wanted to see – and the only sensible response was wow!
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THE RANGE
While the clothes are familiar, the radical frame beneath the skin must surely owe something to the Victory CORE programme, comprising precisionmachined, cast aluminium sections bolted together without a single weld in sight. It could be a technology too far for those who are determined to find something not to like, but it’s an excellent design that is light, stiff, consistent and corrosion-free; and really lends itself to modification if you’ve got talent and imagination. From the front, the top spar is one of two aluminium castings – 29-degrees for the Classic and Vintage because it looks right, and 25-degrees for the Chieftain which hides its tighter geometry behind a feature-packed fairing – with very conventional, clearly visible tubular steel downtubes bolted beneath the headstock. Interestingly these are not load-bearing, in fact they’re not even necessary and are little more than something to mount essential services onto. The spine also acts as the main air intake for the large air cleaner on the primary side of the motor. Reminiscent of the Helmholtz box on early Buells, this is a static air chamber that should kill any induction noise, and some of you will already be wondering whether something like a Forcewinder will fit it. I can see a couple of hours of polishing and radiusing round that twin stacked intake in the cast aluminium spine, just because it would look better – even if it wasn’t used. The middle section, bolted to the back of the spine, comprises a pair of cast side-plates that serve as the rear engine mounts and complete the rest of the cradle, including the swing-arm pivot. A rear sub-frame that supports the skirted steel mudguard is bolted behind that and is braced at the furthest point from the headstock by the only other steel frame member, which secures the back of the mudguard and the long dual mufflers. If you want to bob one, get the spanners out … or wait and see what else Indian themselves might do with it in the future: if they are serious about taking on Harley-Davidson, they’ve got some range building to do, and a new mid section opens up all sorts of opportunities! The form of the swingarm will be familiar to Victory owners – cast
aluminium with a horizontal seam that is just begging to be polished out – but differs significantly in its springing. Indian use a rising rate single shock on a variable-rate linkage, and they run it offset – on the primary drive side – leaving space for a decent sized battery alongside. The conventional coil-over shock is mechanically adjustable for preload on the Classic and Vintage, but replaced by an air shock on the Chieftain. Importantly, the shock is easily accessible for adjustment, so is more likely to be set up properly for two-up work. Up front is a pair conventional telescopic forks – leaf spring forks were obsolete by the end of the forties, just as Harley were casting off their Springers, and there’s no sense in getting too carried away with clever shocks in view of the unsprung weight of a fully skirted front mudguard.
The expanse of the Classic’s rear fender looks huge without the tubes of the sprung heel frame to break it up, or the bags to hide it, but within a few hours you don’t notice it any more, and once 2-tone schemes start to materialize – defined along the coach lines inspired by the original Chief’s full chainguard – you’ll forget that it was ever different. Incidentally, rear wheel removal is a simple matter of jacking the bike up under the motor, then pulling out the ‘Progressive Linkage’ suspension’s rocker pin enables the rear wheel to drop clear the bodywork. The march of progress has been felt with the controls, too, with a keyless ignition switch alongside a fuel gauge, where once an ammeter would have lived, ahead of a speedo that offers an odometer, clock, gear indicator, twin trip meters, ambient air temperature, average mpg and remaining range – which you scroll through using a button on the leading face of Indian’s own switchgear: chrome, of course. What? The speedo not at the front? No, Indian didn’t do it that way back in the day, so they don’t do it that way now. The fly-by-wire throttle’s wiring passes through the inch and a quarter bars together with the rest of the electrics – enabling cruise control as standard across the range – and keeps things neat, while the hydraulic lines are slender, blackwrapped braided steel. Oh, and the indicators and taillight are LEDs. So, what have they done with all this technology?
CHIEF CLASSIC: The bare-bones model can only be described as such when compared to its siblings because it is hardly underspecified and no compromises have been made in its quality and finish – unless you count the Indian script as a massive decal rather than a badge. It would probably be easier to have started with the Vintage and then say what accessories the Classic lacks but it does give us chance to look at the base spec. You’ll get the engine, frame and cycle parts as above, and the chrome Warbonnet mudguard ornament with its glass lens, laced 80-spoke wheels with Dunlop whitewalls, footboards, the Chief’s cast and chromed headlamp nacelle and a black studded leather seat – not vinyl that looks like leather, but the real thing – and you feel the difference. And so will your passenger, because the bodywork isn’t overpowered by a decent-sized pillion perch. No frills – literally – and
while £18,100 might seem a lot for an entry level model, you get a hell of a lot for your money.
CHIEF VINTAGE.
Really pushing the heritage of the brand, the Vintage replaces the Classic’s black leather with a dark tan that grows on you once you’ve got over the initial shock, and which I’m confident will take on a nice patina. Can you specify black leather? Not yet, but I was less bothered by that after 500 miles than at the beginning. The quickly detachable bags are the obvious addition but there’s also mudguard trims front and back, highways bars, a securely-mounted QD screen and an extra metal script on the skirted front mudguard to match the smaller, metal Indian script on the tank, and if you could source the screen and lined leather bags of this quality alone for less than the £1,299 difference between this and the Classic, you’d be doing exceptionally well. It’s not enough to call them bags, to be honest, because they are prime examples of Polaris’ “premium” mantra: thick and supple treated leather, luxuriously lined in the lid with something quilted, American-V.co.uk
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Indian SPECIAL and their leading edge and floor is stretched over a steel former to aid waterproofing and help keep critical aspects of its shape over time while the rest beds-in. They are mounted using a pair of rubber expansion joints in stainless-steel spools, secured by a substantial latch cam and with a lip in the spool for additional peace of mind. And it is a solid fixing that is reasonably unobtrusive when revealed: each bag is rated for 6.8kg/15lbs. The spool has a second rubber bushing on its outer surface, which is for mounting other accessories like backrests and racks, and it is the only accessory attachment bracket that isn’t part of the original hardware on the Classic. In other cases – like fitting a screen, for example – the fixing is always there and effectively invisible: you just buy the screen and fit it onto brackets waiting to accept it. The latching cams are on the large side and can get in the way when loading the bags, but it’s the only thing that does and the malleable leather is a real joy after wrestling with vinyl and cheaper, harder grades of leather: this stuff feels luxurious! And, of course, the seat is made from the same stuff. The saddlebags’ QD buckles are small and comprise a chromed steel receiver with a plastic latch behind the classic buckle. I don’t need to mention the fringes because you’ve got eyes in your head: if you don’t like them, you’ll have to cut them off. Velcro secures the fringes on the seat – and optional fringes below the saddlebag lids – so you can save your scissors if they offend your sensibilities. And obviously when the bags are off, what is underneath is a Chief Classic: no unsightly mudguard designed with both eyes clearly focused on practical wheel removal. The screen’s QD system inspires confidence, with a proper latching mechanism that locks the screen in position and ensures correct replacement. It’s on the tall side for my tastes, but it comes in three heights. Obviously targeting the Heritage Softail, and clearly celebrating a very different heritage, it’s unashamedly more expensive than the Harley but Indian’s 111 packs more of a punch. It will make for a very interesting head-to-head next year, and I’m really looking forward to seeing them together.
THE RANGE
Chieftain Without anything to base a hard bagged, faired motorcycle on, the Indian design team did the only thing they could. They imagined what the original stylists would have done if they had built one, developing the style of the skirted fenders and streamlined heads using visual references from those times. The late 1930s were the days of Santa Fe’s first Super Chief streamliner locomotives – iconic in their own right – and the design team set about creating something that could have come from the pen of G. Briggs Weaver, who is generally considered to be the architect of the streamlined Indians. And then they upgraded it as though it had continually evolved over the next sixty years. At face value the Chieftain’s fairing holds a clear, matching speedo and tacho and if you don’t want to play with all the options, you can just have some sensible additional information on the backlit LCD panel between them. If you want to know more – or are a gadget junkie – there is a toybox of information from how you are hooked into your Bluetooth-paired phone to your tyre pressures in real time. Clever stuff, but it’s not rocket science. Just simple, cute and overdue. My favourite bit is a cubbyhole inside the fairing containing a tethered bag that holds and protects your phone (or helmet cam) while you charge it using the USB interface. There is also an easily accessible conventional 12v socket, which is the obvious power point for either a SatNav or a weatherproofed phone being used as one. And then, of course, there’s the electric screen with a four inch range which will be welcomed by anyone who has wrestled with the age old problem: cool wind deflector or touring screen. It comes with an intermediate height screen that is a good starting point, but has a couple of height options – 4-inches lower or 3-inches higher – more to cater for taller and shorter riders, but the tinted low option would also suit the more custom oriented. The Chieftain’s cast wheels are wrapped in blackwall tyres with a higher load rating than the Chiefs, but then it isn’t trying quite so hard to be a classic and is more likely to be carrying more weight. It’s also likely to be travelling quicker with that wind protection, and steering quicker courtesy of that 25-degree rake at the headstock. In designing their panniers they have again tried to be sympathetic to the original style while offering a worthwhile amount of space. Their floor
forms slightly round the tops of the twin mufflers, and they are hinged at the outside edge, but they have another trick up their sleeve: a central locking system activated either from the keyfob or a rocker switch in the console, which is disabled when the bike is switched off. They too are removable, and again they leave a good looking bike behind. There will obviously be some wiring to account for with the central locking, and that only gets more involved if you take the optional “Concert Audio Lids” to pump out another 100W of sound to add to what is already coming out of the fairing. The fairing obviously isn’t so easily mothballed: there’s way too much going on in there to be able to do without it. At £20,250 it is more expensive than the Street Glide that is in its sights, but while it will be a fairer fight in the bends, compared to a Softail, I would expect it to come down to a battle between brand identities. Returning to the full range, all of the bikes are available in a choice of three colours, which seems a little mean at first sight, but in their first year, Indian’s focus is on having the right bikes in the right places, and three colour schemes makes that a lot easier. Springfield Blue is a close facsimile of the original Royal Blue that was standard on pre-1912 Indians, Indian Motorcycle Red is close enough to the old Indian Red used from 1912 until 1935 when Indian’s then-owner E Paul du Pont offered every colour in the du Pont company’s range for an extra $5 on a $300 bike, and Thunder Black is … well, it’s black, and always a popular choice. All leather accessories – and there are plenty, either fringed or plain – come in both distressed tan or black, both with white stitching. There’s fender trims, footboard trims, grips, lever trims and fork bags, but the piece de resistance is the messenger bag, which looks like it’s going to be a tan-only affair: part laptop bag, part pony express satchel, it’s designed to clip to the rack that replaces a removed pillion seat in a fusion of hi-tech and High Chaparral. Of course, you can also indulge a passion for more chrome with chrome fender tips, which are as much to protect the leading edge of the fender as ornament it, or a full-on bumper rail – front and rear – and, of course, cam, horn and derby covers which come colour-matched to the base colour of the bike. Performance enhancements are limited through Indian themselves to a CARB-compliant Stage 1 pipes exhaust with a choice of tips, but there is obviously much scope for developing the motor a lot further and Indian seem to be relaxed about the opportunities that might be taken by others in developing cams and air cleaners at the very least. Polaris had a relationship with S&S regarding tuning in the early days of Victory and were happy to share original engineering drawings with them to accelerate that process. Whether that will happen here is too early to say, but we are hopeful.
Words: Andy Hornsby
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So, who the hell is the Polaris ... apart from just the company behind Indian? Reading this, it is anticipated that you will be aware of Victory – the built-from-scratch brand that brought the company into the motorcycle sector, but Polaris have been around since 1954 when they built their first snowmobiles – initially as utility vehicles but later for recreation. They diversified into All Terrain Vehicles in 1985 and Personal Watercraft in 1992 and by 1995 were generating more than $1 billion annually in sales for the three lines, with ATVs equalling Snowmobiles and PWC accounting for 7% of group sales as the world’s 4th largest producer. A major player in the Powersports industry, they took the view that it wasn’t a good idea to hinge their future on three lines and looked at acquisitions, as well developments into new markets, and the result – after looking at a variety of other opportunities – seemed to point increasingly at motorcycles. A couple of dirt bike companies came up for sale, and a European manufacturer approached them regarding distributing their bikes through Polaris, and the germ of an idea was born. They also canvassed the opinions of Polaris vehicle owners regarding a number of alternative product lines through their ‘Spirit’ magazine and motorcycles scored highly. Further investigation determined that it wasn’t the off-road market that held the best opportunity but road bikes, and the cruiser sector in particular. The result – in just three years from hiring a couple of engineers for preliminary chassis and transmission work – was a new American motorcycle manufacturer and the Victory V92C. Since then, Steve Menneto, VP of Motorcycles, tells us that they have become the number one Powersports manufacturer in the US, selling more units than Harley-Davidson and Honda, and growing significantly faster. They have increased their output five-fold over the last four years and have got their sights firmly on becoming a $5 billion a year business by 2017, which they expect to achieve by developing their own brands as well as by buying technology through the acquisition of smaller companies – and they don’t underestimate the benefit of R&D and innovation, increasing those budgets by 20% a year. A truly international brand, they retain a stronghold in their hometown of Roseau, Minnesota, but have a motorcycle engine plant at Osceola, Wisconsin, with motorcycle assembly in Spirit Lake, Iowa. That puts both Victory and Indian under the same roof, but they are on wholly different assembly lines. As part of their expansion, they have spent $200 million in plant and infrastructure and taken on 2,600 new employees in the last three years – which has included a doubling of the size of their R&D facility in Wyoming, Minnesota, adding 300 more engineers – and motorcycles are a significant part of that growth. Polaris will make the most of the opportunity that Indian affords to take Victory to new places as a complimentary brand. Victory isn’t a development exercise preparing the ground in anticipation of Indian, and the numbers of bikes, particularly Cross-Series tourers, that we
saw on the street in the US lends credence to Polaris’ Product Director of Motorcycles, Gary Gray’s claims that Victory has hit the #2 spot in developed market for 1400cc+ cruisers over just 15 years. That they have done so without taking on Harley-Davidson directly is remarkable, offering a distinct alternative American product. Indeed, we’ve been put on notice to expect major changes in the Victory division in the near future to build on that, and in exciting directions. It was interesting to learn how world markets are setting the agenda, with the Hammer-S being the best seller in Europe but being withdrawn in the US, the Baggers being stronger Stateside; and there’s the Judge, which stays it its sporting guise in Europe, but is morphing to a sit up and beg cruiser in America. Indian is a different thing entirely, though: they are targeting Harley-Davidson with a premium product that is combining traditional styling with modern technology, demonstrating that the lazy power delivery expected of an American heavyweight cruiser can be realized in modern engine cases and that styling doesn’t have to compromise performance. Why take on Harley-Davidson? Because Harley are the runaway market leader in a massive sector, and because Indian has the heritage to take them on. You might question that, in the light of the gap between Springfield and Spirit Lake, but then Hinckley isn’t Meriden either and that hasn’t done Triumph any harm. Pragmatically, it’s also a sector where Indian can launch a range of motorcycles round a single engine that hits multiple markets: three distinct bikes already and I think we’ll see a few more bikes based round the Thunder Stroke 111 as production settles down … and then you’d be foolish to rule out a smaller engine – let’s call it a Scout, for the sake of argument – because if they’re going to take on Harley, they’ll need to take on the Sportster, in which case let’s hope they account for an A2 license compatible model for Europe! Repeating myself? Damn right: no better way to make sure the message gets across. Self-effacing, they are well aware that the world will be nervous of Indian after the last sixty years, but with Polaris’ engineering reputation and the strength of the Victory motor behind them, combined with a limited warranty that can be extended to five years with unlimited mileage, they exude confidence. They want to put Indian back on top and riding with their senior executives, I think they are capable of doing just that!
ABOVE: Polaris VP Motorcycles, Steve Menneto is a lifelong motorcyclist, and sees motorcycles as instrumental in Polaris future. BELOW: Product Director, Gary Gray’s mission is for Indian to ‘Take its place at the top of American Motorcycles’, and his broad knowledge inspired confidence inspires confidence. BOTTOM: Polaris Industries Director of Industrial Design, Greg Brew had the job of designing an icon and is responsible for the bikes you see.
Words: Andy Hornsby
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Indian SPECIAL
I’d seen my first new Chief in the metal on the previous evening – parked outside the hotel and dirty from the road – but while that had been distinctive, in isolation among a group of Harleys, it didn’t have the same impact as these. The first of their kind and, without putting too fine a point on it, Indian’s last but best chance to come good after years of false starts and promises.
Roadtrip It was a surreal experience: the garage used by Polaris was a couple of blocks, and several lifesize bronze former US Presidents – there’s one on each street corner in this part of town – away from the Rapid City’s Hotel Alex Johnson, and we found ourselves on the corner of St Joseph and 4th standing outside a car showroom guarded by former president Grover Cleveland. It was full of Victorys but the sign proudly displaying the familiar logos of some historic brands ... but not what you’d think. Proudly alongside a seventies BL logo it read Austin, Jaguar, MG, Triumph! I thought about quipping out that I hoped Polaris didn’t follow Leyland’s precedent, but thought better of it: I was already struggling to be understood by our American hosts and didn’t feel up to explaining that I knew there hadn’t been a President Leyland. And then there they were. I’d had a few reservations about the size and shape of the side panel, but the bike looked far better in person than the press shots, and Polaris’ confidence in the brand and their own engineering was off
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the scale, which was brave seeing as these were all pre-production models with the majority registering far less than 500 miles on their odometer, and some of these guys were going to do everything in their power to break them. The rules of engagement established – no running, jumping, pushing, bombing, or being distracted by the buttons on the Chieftain ’til we’d got a feel for the bike – we each picked a bike. I made a beeline for a Classic in ‘Indian Motorcycle Red’ to establish a baseline and we headed out onto 4th Street and our first taste of the most important American motorcycle of a generation ... or three. Could it possibly deliver a traditional power characteristic without a hundred and ten years of continuous production? There’s an excellent fast road to Sturgis – which like many American roads goes by a number of numbers depending on whether you’re referring to it by its a Federal, State or local route number – but there’s a much better road out through Nemo on South Canyon, picking up the Vanocker
Canyon Road: we were going to find out early how well the motor pulled and that the new bikes weren’t afraid of a few corners. Professionals to a man, we checked out the dynamics of the frame, the gearbox and brakes; falling back and gunning the motor to catch up with our colleagues again, and despite slowing for bike-to-bike moving shots, we reached our first waypoint far quicker than we had any right to. We were just twenty miles into the ride and I reckon we’d got the measure of them by the halfway stage, which is when the radios on the Chieftains kicked in, one by one. On the simplest of the range, I was revelling in the sheer stomp of the motor, the sweetness of the clutch and gearbox, and the agility of the steering, at odds with its appearance. I’d been expecting Victory power delivery with maybe some top end power missing but I hadn’t expected such an increase in torque – or just how polished that engine felt. Arriving at the roadhouse in the tiny hamlet of Nemo – where the Clownfish come from – it became clear that not everyone was leaving
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Roadtrip
Sturgis by the multi-lane highways. It will have been a long time since Indians outnumbered Harley-Davidsons anywhere and we were met with bemusement, and some modest interest: mind you, we had arrived en masse and were far from sociable. We were jetlagged and comparing shared experiences with the guys we knew, or else were full of questions for the Indian team. I made the most of the opportunity for a quick change of bikes, and having failed to take the next logical step and grab a Vintage before they were snapped up, left on a Chieftain for the second leg into Sturgis, and was glad that I did. There’s nothing like a screen to tell you how well a motor has been put together, reflecting its mechanical noise back to you; and while a digital tacho is adequate, an analogue dial is better. After the wind noise and muffled exhaust note of the unfaired Classic, the machinations of the Thunder Stroke reflected back at me were mildly irritating, but I was pleased to note that it was mechanical rather than whining, which is ‘a good thing’: I can’t abide whining! I confess that I spent much longer playing with the screen than the radio, figuring – wrongly, as it happens – that I would have plenty of time to hook my iPod, or my Android phone via Bluetooth, into the stereo on the trip to Denver. The right screen on a bagger is critical and I really wanted to know whether the Chieftain’s is
in the right place, as well as how much difference the height made. The Victory Vision’s electric screen, for instance, is a long way forward and the benefit can be lost; I have a love/hate relationship with the tall touring screen on the Cross Country Tour, which I find too tall and a real issue in the rain; and what amounts to a wind deflector on the Cross Country and Harley’s Street Glide is too low and leads to too much buffeting unless you’re careful with your choice of helmet. The Chieftain’s is excellent, offering some protection from the weather when the rains come down, and a modest deflector when you only want to take the worst off but still get some wind in your face. Between the highest and lowest positions, the rake of the screen becomes shallower too, which suits high speed work, and the only improvement I would like to see is some means of allowing air through, or chanelling it round – particularly on hot days – which became increasingly attractive as we neared Sturgis and heavier traffic at high noon. I was accosted by a couple of guys from a stand on Junction Avenue who’d watched everyone else file past and came across to get a closer look: “Are their engines still made by Bombardier?” was the question. I said that they never had been and that they were made in Spirit Lake, Ohio, and he seemed happy with that, and I discovered just an hour later that the motors are actually made
in Osceola, Wisconsin, with the frame and final assembly in Spirit Lake. Turning into Lazelle St, the increased traffic dramatically changed things, and seriously threatened to provide all the road conditions that I needed answers from in a single day! It made me glad that we’d arrived on the last day of the event, having spoken to Steve Kelly who reckoned Sturgis 2013 had peaked on Wednesday and he’d never seen it so busy! That really would have given the engine its ultimate test in terms of its ability to get rid of heat, but would have told us nothing that we didn’t already know: running engines get hot. In this traffic with no wind and nowhere to hide from the heat it stood no chance – I was overheating in a T-shirt standing in the shade five minutes later – but then anything would overheat in that temperature. It’s not so much the engine temperature as the exhausts – like a couple of industrial central heating pipes, and no heatshield will keep all of that in. I could speculate that the Indian’s internal ceramic coating will help, and being tucked in close to the engine is useful but it was still damned hot. It’s worth noting that it didn’t seem to do the bike any harm – it didn’t miss a beat – and there was no evidence of measures having been taken to shut the rear cylinder down: I don’t mind sweating a bit as long as the oil in the motor doesn’t break down.
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Indian SPECIAL
The pack got split by the lights leaving Junction, but we’d got clear-enough instructions: left at Lazelle, two blocks then turn right, parking up behind the Indian stand. The theory was good, but with so much street trading the blocks were hardly recognisable to me and I sailed straight past, only realising my error when I noticed that there were no Indians behind me either! The joy of the grid system means that it’s easy enough to retrace your steps though, and making a mental note of how good the Chieftain’s low speed stability was, I was back in a couple of minutes and looking for water and shade. As I parked up, an interested fella asked me how I’d found the bike and where we’d come from, and in response to my telling him “Rapid City”, asked how it had fared on the hills? Hills? There were hills? I’d noticed the bends, but only spotted the hills on the way back! The press briefing at the Easyrider Saloon took us off the street at the hottest point of the day, and rehydrated us enough to take on the essential Main Street promenade – the famous street lined with bikes, with more bikes parked up the middle – for a photo shoot. That was certainly an experience and would doubtless have been horrendous a couple of days before! It was certainly T-shirt weather, I decided, and stuffed the Halversons Jackpot leather jacket into one of the panniers of the newly purloined Springfield Blue Vintage.
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It stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, too, as we sped back down Vanocker Canyon Road, through Nemo heading for a final shoot on a private road a couple of miles south of Rapid City. That turned out to be entertaining with the locals turning out, unprompted, in their classic American cars – and it was there when I realised that while riding in a T-shirt was liberating, sunburnt inner elbows weren’t fun. The Vintage’s blade screen reflected less noise than the Chieftain’s fairing had, and it wasn’t an unpleasant or intrusive sound, but I hankered for those first twenty miles on the Classic with just the wind for company and just a hint of exhaust. The screen finished pretty much at eye level, and without the luxury of adjustment – electric or otherwise – that would be an issue for me if the weather turned, and the forecasts had been threatening for days. I would much sooner face rain – even heavy rain – head on than try to make out the road through a wet screen: I would have the opportunity to test that theory later. That final detour of the day took our introduction to the Chief up to the hundred-mile mark, and gave us a flavour of what to expect over the following days. For now, however, it was time to get back to the hotel for the shuttle bus back to Sturgis and the Buffalo Chip for its last night of this year’s event.
Day 2: Rapid city to Cheyenne. We were surprisingly clear-headed as we gathered at Rapid City’s homage to Longbridge the following day. The temptation to go wild at the Chip had been tempered by the realisation that the police would be on high alert, post Sturgis, and the party had pulled out of town. Like a night club with the lights, we’d struggled to visualise it in full swing but that only increased our resolve to return for the full party. After the difficulty in keeping everyone together on the first day, we broke into three groups for the second and making sure that each pack had a reasonable selection of models and colours, headed out … the wrong way down a one-way street: good old SatNav. The original intention had been to swap bikes regularly but I made two executive decisions: I was going to ride the bike that I would have bought and really get to know it properly, and I was going to try to lose the screen. As original as Springfield Blue was, and as iconic as the Indian Motorcycle Red, I opted for the Thunder Black because I liked the contrast between the black paint and tan leather. I suspected then that I would prefer it with black leather too, but now I’m not so sure. Heading back into the Black Hills, our first stop would be Mount Rushmore via excellent riding
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roads once we’d cleared Rapid City’s sprawl. It was an early start for a 300 mile day and I was already glad to have lost the screen before we started to climb: fresh air and just the sound of the wind with an undertone of a deep exhaust note – my favourite way to ride at any speed and in almost any weather. That was lucky, because we were apparently determined to make good progress. Again the hills did little except to lower the exhaust note and gearchanges were few – and I got increasingly ambitious with my clutchless shifts, discovering also that the motor pulls cleanly at least one gear either side of the natural ratio, The transmission really doesn’t need the clutch lever as you navigate up or down the box: in fact if it wasn’t for pulling away from standstill, I reckon you could lose the clutch lever altogether. There was an issue with one of the bikes losing power on the hills, but it turned out to be a consequence of a rider who spends a lot of time riding off-road covering his front brake a little too enthusiastically, and certainly enough to spark-up the brake light: the bike’s electronic brain prioritises the braking system over the flyby-wire throttle and erred on the side of safety. Having been alerted to it, and switching bikes with the sweep rider while it got its knickers untwisted, it didn’t play up again.
Don’t kid yourself that America is a land crisscrossed by straight roads: of course they are the quickest way from A to B, but get into the hills and they track their contours, just as here. The difference being that they’re typically better surfaced, wider and emptier. You’ll find a lot of motorhomes anywhere that’s scenic – especially as you get closer to Rushmore and all the feeder roads converge on SD 244 past America’s most famous landmark – but they’re easily passed and are happy to cooperate. Team America (F*ck yeah!) weren’t home, so we satisfied ourselves with a shoot climbing the hill with the monument in the background – like Stonehenge and the Houses of Parliament, it seems smaller than you’re expecting it to be – then headed west, deeper into the Black Hills, pushing the Chiefs harder and faster in search of limits that were far in excess of any of our expectations. To be honest, I’m not sure I found them – certainly not in hill country: the footboards never did touch down, I didn’t trigger the ABS in anger and while the pace wasn’t Superbike fast, we weren’t hanging around. After sixty or so miles of breathtaking roads, south through the Custer National Park, and skirting the political correctness issue raised by the Crazy Horse monument, we approached the high plains of Wyoming and the roads started to straighten out, and flatten out – not that the
Chief cared – and the part of the roadtrip that some of our American hosts were dreading. Surely we wanted twisting, scratching roads not wide open spaces? In truth we wanted everything, and we got our first taste of what was to come before leaving South Dakota, before SD89 joined US18, and it’s hard to describe the sense of vast open space. We took the opportunity for a scheduled fuel stop before crossing out of South Dakota, at Edgemont, before the roads really opened out, and leaving the highway – anticipating that the fuel station was in town – we stumbled across a timeless American scene that couldn’t have been better if had been staged … unless, of course, it had been a Santa Fe Big Chief parked across the railway crossing. You will already know that they do the whole railway thing very differently in the states: you’ll have heard its haunting horns as a freight train crawls through town at a snails pace at stupid o-clock in the morning, sounding off on the approach to crossings – they don’t seem to have considered bridges or tunnels – to the accompaniment of the crossing’s bell. It’s straight out of the movies, and is very much for real. I felt for the folk who lived in the clapboard house next to the crossing, but then you can get used to anything I suppose … and the owner had a cool pickup truck parked next to a snowmobile
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obviously waiting for winter, so it wasn’t all bad. We were still talking about it while filling up, when we were joined by the southern European press pack and a fella and his hound on Kawasaki’s VN800 tribute act – you surely don’t expect me to pass up the opportunity to suggest he might be a High Plains Drifter, do you? It was good to see the Japanese pretender to Indian’s style surrounded by the reborn successor to the proud name, and you’d struggle to knock it. I’d seen one at The Hotrod Hayride a few weeks before that looked even more authentic, because of the way it had been modded, and despite personal experience of its 1500cc predecessor could almost imagine picking one up for the right money, for a laugh. Then I looked at the real thing again and the spell was broken. While some looked over the late fifties Ford Fairlane for sale on the forecourt – there was no shortage of cars for sale at the side of the road – we took on water before saddling up again, making sure we hit the road before the size of our pack doubled. And then it was Wyoming proper, the roads of which have got to be experienced. Arrow straight and disappearing over the horizon, and all below your eye level: above that, massive open skies. There are mountain ranges that more than double the plains’ mean elevation of 6,700 feet above sea level, but they’re mainly on the
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west side where it nudges up to the Rockies. In a State that’s 360 miles wide and 280 miles top to bottom, with state borders drawn-up by someone with a straight-edge, they’re not on your radar if you’re riding down the east side. You’re aware that few people wear helmets in any of these states – or jackets – and the reason frequently given is that there’s nothing to crash into out here: in Wyoming they’re right. We behaved ourselves, playing by Polaris’ rules on company bikes, but there were times I would have readily strapped my lid to the bags and fried my forehead: maybe next time. 0In truth, I was still in some discomfort from sunburned elbows in the sleeves of a leather jacket. It was the ideal time to play with standard cruise control – you can imagine it having been designed for just such roads – but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who’d been testing it for most of the trip already. I can’t imagine a better bike for crossing America’s wide open spaces than a big American cruiser. It’s a place where I’d imagine speed is frustrating, because no matter how fast you went, you would never reach the horizon as quickly as you’d like. Instead you settle down into a comfortable saddle, set the cruise control and relentlessly reel in the horizon. And while you’ve got a bit of thinking time, you thank your deity
of choice that you’re not on a horse and cart with just the ground to ride on and no idea what you might find where the land meets the sky. Hardy people, those pioneers! It explains much about the American psyche, and their motorcycles. I can’t remember a more comfortable stock saddle on anything and I’m not sure if that’s down to the real leather cover or the foam beneath it, but it certainly reinforces Indian’s ‘premium’ message: I live in hope that Victory learn some lessons from the exercise, and the saddle would be a good starter for ten. In fact only the Chieftain was running a production saddle: the Classic and Vintage were more of a bucket that locked you into place, rather than a flatter top allowing the rider to move around to find their perfect position – something already allowed by the generous footboards. Lost with your thoughts on a highway that redefines the expression ‘open road’ you can’t fail to remember the works of Dave Mann, conjuring up ghost riders on lonely deserts. Even when you’re making good progress in a pack, your mind has the space to wander: there’s something about unfathomable distance. There’s something about the ability to see the weather ahead of you, too and that massive sky gives you a much clearer idea of what’s ahead than any weatherman. We could see bad weather over to our left, and
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what turned out to be the south and took some comfort in that until the eastbound US16 met the southbound US85 – the CanAm Highway – and took us directly towards it! But no matter, it was many miles ahead, and while the roads don’t have many bends there was always a chance we’d skirt it, or that it might move on before we got there. We should be so lucky: we caught its edge just as we arrived in Lusk for lunch, where we hoped we might sit it out. You can only make a Subway last so long and set off, unsure which way the road would turn next, on its way to Cheyenne via Lingle, with a scheduled detour via Fort Laramie – and all just a couple of hundred yards from my full waterproofs buried deep in the baggage train. How bad can it be, though? The locals were riding straight into the storm in bandanas and short sleeves, so we followed them into the darkening skies: maybe the road veered off to the right, skirting what looked like something between a heavy downpour ands a monsoon? Fifteen minutes later it was all too clear! The Americans are barking mad, or something of that reckless pioneering spirit – or maybe grain alcohol – lives within them. A few pulled over on the fringes of the storm, to shelter beneath tarpaulins and wait it out, or else to dress for rain, but the overwhelming majority of the Harley guys just carried on through rain that felt
like acupuncture through a summer duty leather jacket! It got ugly in the middle, with our guide deciding to pull over to unpack something waterproof, and dissent in the ranks lead to someone – I never did work out who – deciding to retreat to the edge of the storm again rather than standing in the rain. The reality was always going to be to face it down, and the low point came when a girl on a Softail pulled over and asked if we were all okay? The shame of it! Satisfied that we were okay, she continued into the storm, albeit in full waterproofs … and a headscarf. To be honest, we couldn’t have been a lot wetter and there was no sense donning waterproofs over wet jeans, so covering every bit of skin exposed by my open face helmet – and grateful for having taken the clip-on face mask – we headed back into the storm! It felt lighter than before, and there was some sense of relief as we passed the point of our last return … but the celebrations were premature. It had moved south and we hadn’t hit it yet. We soon did. At the time, I wished I’d remembered how to wrap a Buff in such a way that it covered the band between my D4V1DA glasses and Vintage Rocketeer helmet, and still came down to offer some extra bit of damping on the cheeks – or even two buffs – but in reality nothing short of
a full face was going to make much difference, especially as the speed of the pack seemed to be inversely proportional to the amount of rain falling: I can only guess they had a screen, and higher speeds deflected more rain. Keeping a good distance from the rider in front, I set the cruise control and used my right hand to mask my forehead hoping to get some good footage of abject stupidity in the face of adversity on a video camera that had already exhausted its battery. At one point the road was half covered with the debris where the adjacent irrigation canal had burst its banks but it didn’t represent any real danger. The sense of elation as the skies started to clear was palpable. I can confidently say that I have never been wetter on a motorcycle in my life, but I was still smiling. Like banging your head against a brick wall, it’s nice when you stop. Maybe I should have kept the screen? Nah! We pulled in at Lingle, at the turnoff for the historical site of Fort Laramie, but nobody had any enthusiasm for wandering round, soaked to the skin, instead refilling the tanks and followed the US85 east. Not before realising what it is that the harder-riding Americans know about riding in bad weather, though: we recognised most of the Harleys that had passed us parked up at bars in town, and I daresay their shirts and bandanas would dry a lot quicker than our leathers.
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Something else they knew is that while you can get wet bloody quickly in a high plains deluge, the weather on the other side is a return to riding into an industrial hairdrier, and twenty miles down the road – where the US85 turned south again at Torrington (now where have I heard that name before?) – with leather jacket open and flapping in the warm wind, my T-shirt was dry, the leather was drying and if I could only get enough warm air to my nether regions, I would have been drier than I’ve been in most recent English summers! There was a real sense that we were on the home straight now: Cheyenne was clearly signposted, the skies had cleared again and the thunder black clouds were behind us, and the Thunder Black bike beneath me still hadn’t missed a beat. It had come out of the storm cleaner than I had, in fact, and would need little more than a wipe over for the following day’s moving shots. I’ve long been a fan of valanced mudguards on long haul motorcycles for their ability to keep the road water down, your feet dry and the bike clean, and the full skirts of the Chief take some beating! Long straight roads gave me plenty of time to question the meaning of a sign as we left Torrington – “Route 85 Closed 10 Miles Ahead When Flashing” – which was no clearer ten miles down the road at an unremarkable crossroads, and a further announcement: “85 Closed. Turn
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Back To Torrington When Flashing”. I was expecting nothing short of a weak bridge but all I can think of – is that it’s the last chance to easily turn round before starting the 2000ft ascent to Wyoming’s capital, Cheyenne. What? You mean there’s a hill between the two? Not so’s you’d notice, and if there was any extra loading on the motor, the Chief wasn’t letting on. The terrain was as flat and featureless as your imagination can take and you welcome the sight of a mountain range to break what you could consider to be monotony, but not me. My metabolism had synchronised with the Chief and I was enjoying the open space. The motor was happily spinning at 2,800rpm and the bike traversing the terrain at a rate of eighty miles every hour, and loving it! Hang on: there must be hills! We came across a current generation FLHX running with a Sportster and one-by-one we passed them … until the bloke on the Street Glide got the hump, and raising a solitary finger, he let loose his horses and went for it in an explosion of hair and noise. We’ll never know what he’d done to the 103-inch Twin Cam, other than a set of pipes – unless he writes in – but he gave a good account of himself. And then a former CVO Street Glide owner, representing the South African press, decided to give chase and the pack broke behind him, maintaining similar
speeds but at a safe distance so we wouldn’t necessarily be considered to be chasing. Everything the Street Glide had, the Chief – a Springfield Blue Vintage with a screen – answered, with the notable exception of doing so in sixth throughout while the Street Glide was cogging down for the steeper inclines (see, I told you there were hills), its rider’s body language suggesting he was neither comfortable or happy. Poor sod, but a valuable lesson learned: know your enemy! Satisfied that the limiting factor was going to be the speed limiter – which cuts in at 120mph – rather than anything else, our esteemed colleague throttled back and we resumed our quick cruising speed again. For my part, I wish I’d managed to fasten my jacket before we first took off, but the flapping leather was only a minor irritant: the bike didn’t care, still running true and oblivious to the extra wind resistance. We toyed with a few other riders heading south, some pleased to see us, others apparently affronted by a pack of oddly dressed people on standard, shiny motorcycles, but it was always done in good humour and helped pass the time. And I never did get to fasten my jacket. Rejoining civilisation on the multi-lane US87 into Cheyenne was something of an anti-climax after the freedoms of the day, but it was good to
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see our evening accommodation even if we were the last to get there. Everyone else had found alternative routes, by-passing the weather, but I’m not sure that many of us would have switched places with them: what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!
Day 3: Cheyenne to Denver.
After the reasonable mileage of Sunday, the run south to Denver looked like plain sailing, but there’s no joy in motorcycles on Interstates so after a quick blast on I25, crossing into Colorado, we peeled off at Loveland and headed for hills that made those in South Dakota look like a bowling green. We had grabbed an early start, to get the jump on the horrendous weather that had been forecast, the original plan being to really push the bikes to their limits on the Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved road in the US, running west of out Estes Park to Grand Lake – appropriately new Indians following an old Indian trail. Learning my lessons from the previous day, I packed waterproofs in the leather saddlebags of the Vintage … and a thermal shirt, and a sweatshirt – we would be seeing altitudes of 12,000 feet, but in the event, most of it stayed packed.
The best laid plans, and all that, we lost the weather window while permissions for riding and photographing in the National Park were sought, and our plucky but frustrated band set off to try and salvage something of the day, heading into blue … no black … no blue skies as the canyon roads twisted and turned. With roads sandwiched between sheer rock faces and the rivers that carved through them over millennia, there really was no easy way of knowing where the road was heading: we certainly weren’t in Wyoming any more! And then the rains came again. Remembering the perils of torrential weather on straight roads – and with a couple of our number having ridden the road before – we talked ourselves out of a four-to-five hour ride at enforced speed limits with talk of snow on the peaks, hailstorms possible almost anywhere else and very little shelter and returned to Estes Park and a flurry of phone calls. Other groups had set off too, decisions were being made on the fly, new groups were formed, and some got lost and had little choice but to continue on to Denver. The more intrepid took on the mountains and the weather – and what mountains, and what weather! I can’t lay claim to have experienced the mountain hailstorm first hand, but I did watch something similar from the comfort of the Stone Cup Cafe in Lyons, maybe 6,500 feet lower, while
tucking into a typically substantial burger topped with blue cheese. Having headed off in two groups in search of other photo opportunities, we had picked our way out of the foothills and found shelter just as an epic hailstorm hit. When the weather turns in Colorado, it turns! The second breakaway group turned up just as the hailstorm fizzled out, looking bedraggled, and we had as much sympathy for them as they’d had for us the previous day … but we deferred our gloating until after checking the panniers, and how well they had stood up to the heaviest rain I’ve seen since I was last in Louisiana: and I hardly dared look because my cameras were in one of them! Bone dry. Deciding that it wouldn’t hurt to anticipate more rain, I dug my waterproofs out of the other pannier and regretted it within five miles. I should’ve learned from Wyoming and reckon I was less comfortable through perspiration than precipitation the previous day. I would have stopped to take them off, but the pack had the scent of a hot shower and a cold beer in its nostrils and a couple of minutes on the hard shoulder would have been hard to make up on the road: clear of the Rockies, we were making excellent time on straight roads into Boulder. Part of me was looking forward to a shower, another wanted to just carry on riding south … or maybe west … or maybe I could nip and see
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my kid brother in New York, after I’d ridden the PCH – once I’d got these damned waterproofs off. Both thoughts, however, were fighting a losing battle with a more important question: how much would a lock-up cost? And could Indian trace the missing Thunder Black Vintage to me: “No Niklas, I was running a Springfield Blue Chieftain for that last stretch”. I was so preoccupied with such thoughts that the view of Boulder disappearing into the background in my rear view mirror, looking as though we’d just climbed out of a crater, caught me completely by surprise. I can’t explain whereabouts on the Boulder-Denver Turnpike I must have been, because geographically Denver is no higher than Boulder, but there must be a ridge between them. Once again, I hadn’t been aware of the road climbing, and a quick glance down at the speedo – the LCD panel in tacho mode – told me I was pulling 2200rpm in sixth, snatch free, without complaint and with effortless torque on tap! It was a time for reflection, that ran over in to the first beer of the evening, chatting with a couple of other journos: bloody hell these are good! Better than good: they’re stunning! Indian have hit the nail squarely on the head, rather than redefining the nail, as Polaris did
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with Victory, or developing an entirely new fixing system, which the Japanese have been trying to do since they started their cruiser programmes. They have delivered an engine and a bike within a ridiculously tight time frame, and one that embodies both traditional values and modern engineering: it pulls like an American engine should, the production quality is in a different league to anything else in the sector – as is the ride quality – all served up with a big dollop of heritage, albeit inherited, that marks the return of Indian in a big way. It demonstrates just what is possible with modern engineering, inspiration and ambition. I would say that it owes more to Triumph than Harley-Davidson, but the Indian team have been even brighter than whoever briefed Triumph’s design engineers, and have stuck to a Indian’s stylistic heritage far tighter, delivering a more proportional motor and – perhaps even more importantly – allowing its character to show through. The result is a predictable, consistently powerful, well-braked, and one of the most engaging standard motorcycles I’ve ridden to date. So where could Indian go now? I can’t tell you – and they certainly won’t, despite having got the next few years fully
mapped out – but I would expect to see a Chieftain with a ‘trunk’ announced by the end of the year to complete their heavyweight family. And I would be surprised if we didn’t see a Scout announced by the middle of next year to take on the Sportster – because they’ll want to woo younger riders early and build up brand loyalty – probably reinstating some of that old rivalry between America’s two biggest manufacturers along the way. If they were to do that, I would implore them to build an A2 model for the European market, to break down barriers to ownership, or even design the motor in such a way as to allow a single cylinder ‘Brave’ to be developed from it. That would leave a yawning chasm between a Scout and a Chief would be safe – currently owned by Harley’s Dyna and Softail ranges – but Indian’s frame technology lends itself to mixing components, leaving the door wide open for a sporting Chief or a big-inch Scout: maybe the first factory Chout, in memory of the legendary Max Bubeck! One thing is for certain: 2014 is going to be a very interesting year. Words: Andy Hornsby Pics: Indian Motorcycles
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