Cycle News

INTERVIEW P86 INDIAN MOTORCYCLE'S STEVE MENNETO citing! I think that when you see our capability intersect with our innovative willingness to produce different model platforms reflecting Indian's past traditions, you can see some fun opportunities. You've already developed the Thunder Stroke 111 V-twin engine to power the new 2014 Chief – but will all Indian Vtwins have a 111 cubic inch engine capacity? Will you develop different size V-twin engines? Our development team has the capability to produce different capacity variants where it makes sense to do so, to satisfy the customer and enable a dealer to make money selling them. The 111 cubic inch engine size is not written in stone. The obvious such model everybody is asking about is the Scout. The Scout was the other iconic Indian product in the history books, but it was a step down from the Chief in capacity, performance and price. Do you envisage building a modern Indian Scout? I think we can say the Scout is in our future, but in bringing Indian back to the marketplace, we wanted to address the fact that the bigger-engined bikes represent a greater volume of sales. In viewing Indian's past, we basically had to choose between the Chief and a Scout as the two cornerstone bikes of the brand. We went with the Chief because the bigger market for such a bike delivers us the opportunity to grow faster. Did you price it to demonstrate that Indian is serious in coming to the marketplace with a volume product? In the USA the 2014 Chief will cost $18,999 MSRP, and I'd say that this shows we are very serious. The day we bought the company we knew where we were going with it. We knew that the previous owners wanted to position Indian as an ultra premium brand, but we came in with the strategy that we wanted to make Indian accessible to motorcycle riders around the world, yet still deliver that premium product. Stroke 111 engine? We were looking for a name that would fit the heavyweight capacity and nature of the motor, and the sound of it, and we thought that Thunder Stroke captured that. It's a pushrod engine. Did you consider doing an overhead cam motor, which would be in keeping with Indian's performance heritage, and would further enable you to stand apart from Harley? This was considered, but as we got on a solid footing in bringing the new Indians out as being " We will begin manufacturing Indian motorcycles in September this year, and we're on track to bring bikes to market in the third quarter of 2013. There's a little bit of a difference. The ultra premium brand is really there for a small number of riders, and Indian, in keeping with its history, should be enjoyed by the full-rider community, not just by those who can afford an ultra premium price tag. So it's been a challenge for our engineering and product development teams, as they had to bring that premium product to market at a price point that's accessible to everyone around the world, and that's not an easy thing to do in just two years, as they've succeeded so brilliantly in doing. Why call it the Thunder " true to the brand, we wanted to show that we understood the brand heritage, to pay homage to our past and then power our future. So we decided our first engine had to be a pushrod motor with the parallel pushrod tubes, the downswept exhaust headers, the left side intake, and then outside the engine, the valanced fenders, and the war bonnet. We tried to take five or six styling cues from the older bikes, and give new life to them in the 2014 Indian. Do you rule out in the future the possibility that you would ever make overhead cam In-

• Cover