2 019 I N D I A N F T R 12 0 0 / F T R 12 0 0 S
F I R S T R E V I E W
P78
I
t's nice when a plan comes together.
For Indian Motorcycle, that plan was
utter annihilation of the American Flat
Track Championship with the reborn In-
dian Wrecking Crew, debuting with a win
at Daytona in 2017 and continuing—almost
entirely unabated—into the 2019 season.
Two national championships have
followed for the legendary Jared Mees,
but this domination was only one part of
Indian's strategic plan. The second was
the development and construction of
the FTR1200 and FTR1200 S, machines
based as close as possible to Mees' 750
but with the necessary concessions to
make them a viable option for the street.
Thus, the FTR1200 is the culmination of
four years of development work that ran
concurrently to the race bike program,
with many thousands of development
miles logged between Minneapolis and
Switzerland, where Indian's engine part-
ner SwissAuto are based.
"We started working on FTR750 in the
fall of 2015," says Indian Senior Director,
Reid Wilson. "With the FTR750, there
was a desire to go racing, to live up to
the original Indian brand and the records
they set in flat track. We saw that we had
an opportunity to grow the FTR750 into
a street bike that would be relevant, not
only in North America but internation-
ally, and then be competitive on a global
stage. So that started basically spring to
mid-year of 2016.
"2017 was when we first got on the
bike. We stayed in Switzerland because
we wanted to design this for a European
rider as well as a North American rider,
but we really wanted to make sure it
meets the needs of the international
market. We did a lot of the client testing
and development on the roads in the
summer in Switzerland. Once we saw
the bike, and once we saw the hard
model, there were some minor points of
discussion, but everybody really loved
the design and got behind it. It was
actually a pretty seamless development
process from a design standpoint."
For a bike weighing
of 500 pounds,
surprisingly fun
T H E M OTO
F O R I N
E X P E CTAT
INDIAN'S
Yr Own Psal
Wrecking Crew
BY RENNIE SCAYSBROOK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BARRY HATHAWAY
