Indian FTR 1200

What is an American motorcycle? That’s easy to answer, surely; an enormous cruiser, thunderous v-twin engine, gaudy design, basic engineering? Yeah, that pretty much just about sums it up.

- Harry Fisher

However, while all of the above might be true, it does ignore the phenomenon of the American racing motorcycle, a phenomenon that is even more interesting because the sport for which it was designed was (and is) so ‘American’, while the motorcycles built to compete, are not.

The flat track racer is lean and purposeful, the complete antithesis of road bikes. It is very fast, handles well and has a stark beauty all of its own, which does rather make one wonder why American manufacturers haven’t seen fit to produce road-legal versions.

Actually, it has been tried but very half-heartedly, which has left the door wide open for Indian to take a leap into unknown territory and produce the FTR1200, possibly the most anticipated motorcycle of 2019.

Indian was involved in flat track racing during their first incarnation, taking AMA National Championship titles in 1951, ’52 and ’53, the year the original company went bankrupt and ceased trading, leaving the market wide open for a certain manufacturer from Milwaukee. Despite concerted assaults from Europe and Japan which undoubtedly had a huge impact on the home-grown product, the company survived and came to define American motorcycling.

It was into this one-make dominated market that the Indian name reappeared in 2011, under the ownership of Polaris. Initially, it looked as if the heritage trail of Polaris would be following Indian and would be the traditional American route of large cruiser motorcycles, however the Chief and Chieftain models did nothing to dispel this impression.

Even the Scout and Scout Bobber, showed that Indian was thinking on its feet, as these models were still variations on the theme, albeit smaller but still packing serious punch in the market. The heritage was there for all to see but with a subtly modern appearance.