Indian Motorcycles
The heydays of the Indian motorcycles were between the 1920s and the 1950s although the market presence of the company started at the dawn of the 20th century with the first motorcycle production in the United States. The Scout and the Chief were the two models that launched the company, the former was produced before the Second World War, while the latter was launched afterwards. In fact Indian motorcycles were widely used during the war as they helped soldiers move very conveniently over all sorts of terrain. The company that produced the vehicles was the Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company with the headquarters in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The Indian Chiefs were the Indian motorcycles that passed from the 1000 cc to 1200 cc engine within a year from the release. As those were the early days of motorbike manufacturing, constant improvements were added to the model that had a front brake next. By 1940, the Chief had reached such a level of development that it was considerably superior to its rival the Harley. The Chiefs were probably the most comfortable and good looking Indian motorcycles of their times with a racing capacity unparalleled at that moment; these Indian motorcycles could actually reach around 100 miles per hour when tuned. The production of the Chiefs was ceased in 1953 due to the company’s financial problems.
The Indian motorcycles in the Scout collection were smaller than the Chief, thus it started from the 596 cc version and it improved to 745 cc in 1927. The most successful year for this collection was 1928 with the 101 version. Afterwards the popularity of the Scout Indian motorcycles declined when the company decided to use the heavy Chief frame in the design. The advantage of these Indian motorcycles was that they could be ridden by common users without any difficulty because of small size.
After the disappearance of the Indian motorcycles from the market in the 70s, several other products were sold under the brand name but without any right to the name as such. In 2006, a British company announced the intention to revive the tradition of Indian motorcycles. The plan is to create a new Chief product with modern fuel injection and a different V-Twin engine. According to this very optimistic future prospects, the Indian motorcycles will be represented in around fifty dealerships around the United States by 2011. Hopefully, this will come true and we’ll see these bikes riding once again on our runways.
