This month’s launch of an overhauled Scout platform was “Indian’s GS moment,” according to a headline in the June 2024 issue of Bike magazine.
That confusing statement is a reference to the fact that the Scout platform is really important to Indian, in the same way that the GS is really important to BMW. According to Bike, the Scout platform represents 40 percent of Indian’s sales.
As a slight aside, I’d be interested to know whether Scout sales have gone up since Harley-Davidson stopped selling its air-cooled Evo-engined Sportsters. A while back, I had a chance to spend a full day riding one of the new Sportsters and my overall impression was that, although it had a few tiny advantages in terms of performance and tech, it looks awful and I’d still rather have an Indian Scout Bobber.
Sales of the new Sportster haven’t been encouraging. Sales of the platform dropped 46.2 percent in 2023; the Sportster accounts for just 10.1 percent of Harley’s overall sales. The only segment performing worse for Harley is the Pan America platform, which delivered a meager 2.8 percent of Harley’s motorcycle sales in 2023.
As someone who really likes the Pan America, I find that to be a damned shame. But it’s a statistic that may answer the question posed by this article. Instead of the Scout being “Indian’s GS” I would like to see Indian Motorcycle offering an actual GS-esque adventure motorcycle. But maybe the kids in Minnesota have decided against it?
If so, I wonder what changed their mind. Not long after Indian’s FTR 1200 launched in 2018, the website Asphalt & Rubber (RIP) published a screenshot from an internal Polaris document showing that, along with plans to produce a liquid-cooled big twin engine, Indian intended to expand the FTR platform to cover more genres. First, we were to get a more street-focused bike – which I suppose we got in 2021, in the form of the FTR and FTR Sport. Both bikes wear 17-inch wheels, as opposed to the 19-inch front and 18-inch rear that were on the original FTR 1200 (and now the FTR Rally).
(Digressing here: I spent a few years not paying attention to motorcycles so had not really looked at the FTR/FTR Sport before. Those are really sexy bikes, man. Especially the FTR Sport. They give off a ‘MT-09 but more comfortable’ vibe that I really like. Shame they have an MT-10 price tag)
After that, according to the leaked internal document, we were supposed to get an FTR-based adventure motorcycle. In terms of timeframe, the document suggested the street bike would be unveiled for 2020, and the adventure bike in 2021.
That didn’t happen, obviously, but 2020 was kind of a difficult year for… well, everyone but medical PPE manufacturers. Vehicle manufacturers were wise to take their foot off the gas during the pandemic. The street version of the FTR arrived a year behind schedule, but now here we are in 2024 and there’s still no Indian adventure bike. Why?
Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any other motorcycle manufacturer that doesn’t offer a full-on adventure bike (eg KTM 890 Adventure R), adventure tourer (eg Triumph Tiger 1200 GT), or, at least, adventure-styled sport tourer (eg BMW S 1000 XR). Many offer all three variations on the theme. Honestly, Indian is the only manufacturer I can think of that is producing motorcycles of 500cc and larger but that does not have an adventure offering.
Sure, just because literally everyone else is doing something, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to, as well. But this is Indian we’re talking about. Indian’s parent company is Polaris – maker of some of the world’s most popular side-by-side vehicles and ATVs. It is a company that knows off road. Whereas people might have once raised an eyebrow at the thought of Harley or Royal Enfield producing adventure bikes, for Indian it’s a natural fit.
So, although the market is saturated with adventure motorcycles, I feel it would be entirely possible for Indian to get a good-sized piece of the pie. As I say, it seems Indian would have agreed with that assumption five or so years ago.
Maybe it still does.
Polaris has always been a company that pays keen attention to the bottom line. That was often the curse of Victory; the brand was restricted from taking the really big swings that its engineers and designers and marketing teams clearly wanted to, because money. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, 2020 was pretty rough in the motorcycling world. So was 2021. For Polaris, though, the hurt carried on even after that. According to the Star Tribune, the hurt is still hurting.
“To get through the COVID-19 pandemic and deal with supply chain challenges directly afterward, the Medina-based company had to make some expensive changes to production and inventory,” the newspaper reported earlier this year. “After (2023) fourth quarter profits came in well below expectations, officials at Polaris Inc. said they will return (this year) to a lean manufacturing focus and take other steps to drive down costs and improve the company’s profit margins.”
Translation: don’t expect any big swings. Updates on existing successful models like the Scout (and probably Chief), yes. More Jack Daniels and RSD collaborations, yes (unfortunately – RSD is the new Arlen Ness). But forays into new genres? No, probably not.
The silver lining is that Polaris has acknowledged that Indian achieved its first year of profitability in 2023. It took nine years but the brand is now actually making money for its corporate overlords. That’s gotta count for something. So, if the updates to “Indian’s GS” turn out to be well-received it could be that Indian will dust off plans for that FTR adventure bike in 2025. Maybe. I hope.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to think that any plans for an electric motorcycle from Indian are about as a dead as a dead thing can be.
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