Indian Motorcycle: 10 Things to Know About America’s Oldest Motorcycle Brand
When Americans talk about motorcycles, Harley-Davidson usually owns the conversation. But Harley wasn’t first. Indian Motorcycle was founded in 1901 in Springfield, Massachusetts, two years before Harley-Davidson and four years before Triumph, and for the first three decades of motorcycle history Indian was the bigger, more dominant, more famous of the two American brands. Then in 1953 it collapsed, spent 58 years as a zombie name, and finally came back to life under Polaris Industries in 2011. Here are 10 things to know about America’s oldest motorcycle brand and its remarkable second act.
TL;DR
- Indian was founded in 1901 by George Hendee and Oscar Hedstrom in Springfield, Massachusetts. Harley-Davidson didn’t sell its first motorcycle until 1903.
- The original company went bankrupt in 1953, followed by 58 years of failed revival attempts under various owners with no connection to the original.
- Polaris Industries acquired the brand in 2011 and finally got the revival right. The modern lineup runs from the FTR1200 sport-naked to the Roadmaster tourer, and Indian has won three MotoAmerica King of the Baggers championships since 2020.
The Indian story is the story of American motorcycle history itself : invention, dominance, collapse, decades in the wilderness, and finally a real comeback. Here are 10 things to know.
1. Indian was founded in 1901 by George Hendee and Oscar Hedstrom, two years before Harley-Davidson
George M. Hendee was a former champion bicycle racer who’d founded the Hendee Manufacturing Company in 1897. Oscar Hedstrom was a Swedish immigrant engineer building his own motor designs in a Connecticut workshop. The two partnered in 1900, and on 25 May 1901, Hedstrom completed the first Indian prototype at the old Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company in Middletown, Connecticut. The first public demonstration took place on Cross Street in Springfield at noon on 1 June 1901. Harley-Davidson wouldn’t sell its first motorcycle until 1903, making Indian America’s oldest motorcycle brand by a clear two years.
Source: Wikipedia - Indian Motorcycle
2. The original spelling was “Indian Motocycle” (no R), and the first American V-twin came in 1907
Indian wasn’t a typo. For most of its original life, from 1901 through the 1920s, the company spelled its product “motocycle” rather than “motorcycle.” It was both a marketing choice and a holdover from a time when the English word itself was still in flux. More importantly, in 1907 Indian introduced the first American-built V-twin engine motorcycle, a full decade before Harley-Davidson delivered theirs. The V-twin would go on to become the defining engine architecture of American motorcycling, and Indian got there first.
Source: New England Historical Society - The Glory Days of Springfield’s Indian Motocycle
3. The “Wrecking Crew” swept the 1911 Isle of Man TT with a 1-2-3 finish
Indian sent its factory racing team to the 1911 Isle of Man TT on the newly extended Mountain Course. The Indian race bikes had advanced tech for the era : all-chain drive, two-speed gearbox, and a real drum brake on the rear wheel. The British competition still ran belt drives. Oliver Godfrey won the Senior class at an average of 47.63 mph, with Indians taking second and third places behind him. It remains the only year an American motorcycle has ever won the Isle of Man TT, and the only time any manufacturer has swept the podium there. The Indian factory team picked up the nickname “the Wrecking Crew” that endures to this day.
Source: The Vintagent - 1911 Indians Sweep Isle of Man TT
4. The pre-war classics : Chief, Scout and Four defined American motorcycling
By the 1920s and 1930s, Indian had three nameplates that became permanent fixtures of American motorcycle culture. The Chief (1922) was the big V-twin tourer with the deeply valanced fenders you still see on every modern Indian. The Scout (1920) was the lighter, sportier middleweight that won countless flat-track races. And the Four (1928-1942) was an inline four-cylinder oddity, one of the only mass-produced four-cylinder American motorcycles ever built. All three names are still in the modern Indian catalog more than a century later.
Source: Indian Motorcycle official - Becoming Legendary
5. Indian declared bankruptcy in 1953 and stopped making motorcycles
The post-war years were brutal for the original company. Quality issues, labor disputes, ageing designs, and stiffening competition from British and Japanese imports all hit Indian hard. In 1953, after 52 years, the Indian Motocycle Manufacturing Company stopped production. The Wigwam factory in Springfield closed. The last “real” Chief rolled off the line. For an entire generation of American riders, Indian became a brand from the past, a name on memorabilia, a ghost in vintage shops.
Source: Wikipedia - Indian Motorcycle
6. The lost decades : 58 years of failed revival attempts (1953-2011)
After 1953 the Indian name was bought, sold, sued over, and re-launched repeatedly by parties with no connection to the original company. There were Italian-built Indian-badged minibikes in the 1960s. There were the Floyd Clymer Royal Enfield-based “Indians” of the late 1960s. There were long stretches of trademark battles through the 1980s and 1990s. The most serious attempt was the Gilroy Indian in California (1999-2003), which built a few thousand bikes before collapsing into bankruptcy. None of these projects had the engineering depth, dealer network, or capital to do the brand justice. The name kept fading.
Source: Wikipedia - Indian Motorcycle
7. Polaris Industries bought Indian Motorcycle in 2011, and finally got it right
In April 2011, Polaris Industries, the Minnesota-based snowmobile, ATV and side-by-side manufacturer that had launched its own Victory motorcycle brand back in 1998, acquired Indian Motorcycle. This wasn’t a logo grab. Polaris had the manufacturing scale, the engineering depth, the dealer network, and the patience to do it right. Within two years they had a clean-sheet V-twin engine ready. Within three years they had a complete production lineup. In 2017, Polaris would shut Victory down to focus everything on Indian, the bigger bet, and clearly the right one.
Source: Polaris - Indian Motorcycle press release
8. The Thunder Stroke 111 (2014) and the liquid-cooled PowerPlus 108 (2020)
On 9 March 2013 at Daytona Bike Week, Polaris unveiled the all-new Thunder Stroke 111 : a 49-degree air-cooled V-twin producing more than 115 lb-ft of torque, the first clean-sheet Indian engine in seven decades. Parallel pushrod tubes, finned heads, down-firing exhausts : an engine that looked unmistakably Indian. The first model to wear it was the relaunched Indian Chief Vintage in 2014. Six years later, for the 2020 Indian Challenger, Polaris introduced the PowerPlus 108 : a liquid-cooled 1,768 cc V-twin producing 122 hp and 128 lb-ft. Two engines, one philosophy : traditional Chief/Roadmaster touring on the air-cooled Thunder Stroke, modern sport-bagger performance on the liquid-cooled PowerPlus.
Sources: Polaris - Thunder Stroke 111 unveiling · Cycle World - 2020 Indian Challenger
9. The FTR1200 (2019) - Indian broke the cruiser mold with a street flat-tracker
For more than a century Indian had built cruisers. Then in 2019, the company released the FTR1200 : a street-legal version of the FTR750 race bike that had been dominating American Flat Track since 2016. The FTR1200 ran a 1,203 cc V-twin producing roughly 120 hp, with 19-inch wheels, premium suspension and proper naked-bike ergonomics. It was the first Indian street bike in the modern era that wasn’t a cruiser, and a clear statement that Polaris-era Indian intended to compete beyond traditional V-twin touring. The FTR opened the door for everything else.
Sources: Indian Motorcycle - FTR 1200 debut press release · Motorcycle.com - 2019 Indian FTR1200 First Ride
10. The modern lineup and King of the Baggers : the Harley rivalry is officially back on
Today’s Indian range spans the FTR sport-naked, the modern Scout middleweight, the Chief Bobber Dark Horse, the Springfield Dark Horse, and the flagship Roadmaster Dark Horse Limited tourer at the top. Meanwhile in MotoAmerica King of the Baggers, the bagger-class racing series that has captured huge American attention, Indian has won three championships: Tyler O’Hara in 2020 and 2022, and Troy Herfoss in 2024. That’s more KOTB titles than any other brand. The 100-year-old Harley vs. Indian rivalry, dormant for half a century, is officially back on the racetrack.
Sources: Indian Motorcycle - King of The Baggers · Indian Motorcycle - Herfoss 2024 KOTB championship
So why does Indian matter?
Indian matters because it represents the deepest layer of American motorcycle history. Founded before Harley, dominant for the first three decades of motorcycling, dead for nearly six decades, and now genuinely competitive again under serious ownership, the brand’s story is the story of American manufacturing in microcosm : invention, dominance, decline, wilderness years, and rebirth. The fact that you can walk into a dealership in 2026 and ride away on a brand-new Chief Bobber wearing a nameplate that traces unbroken back to 1922 is, frankly, remarkable.
The Polaris-era Indian isn’t a tribute act. The engineering is modern, the warranty network is real, the dealer count keeps growing, the racing program is winning. After 110+ years of starts and stops, Indian Motorcycle is finally being run the way it always deserved.
If you’ve ridden one, or you remember the original era, or you saw a Gilroy Indian back in 2002, the brand has earned a place in your story. And if you’re shopping new today, the modern lineup is, for the first time in 75 years, genuinely worth comparing to anything Milwaukee builds.
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