Indian

[jmdaniel]

Yea--I owned 2 of them and was on the forums and talked to the guys at Daytona every year. May have even talked to your buddy, you never know. BTW---did you ever own or ride a Victory? Just curious. If you had, I think your view would be different.

It was easy to see after the purchase of Indian that all of the focus and attention was going somewhere else. Again, no support from Polaris. All of the Cross bikes AND steel frame bikes got their choice of 1 single backrest and luggage rack from Victory and the Cross bike were about 1K for the combo. It was left up to Witchdoctor and other aftermarket companies to give owners what they wanted and needed---Polaris wasn't gonna do it! Now, you can outfit an Indian Scout 50 different ways with ALL Polaris parts---bars, seats, bags with fringe and bags without fringe hard and leather--take your choice. Then you get into the Chief models and the choices explode. I remember when Victory dropped the Kingpin and started with the new Boardwalk----same bike with different tins. Now that is real promotion.


When you buddy said they lost money the last few years, he was probably correct in that Victory offered nothing and current lines were left to die on the vine---UNLIKE INDIAN. It is more about where you put your effort and energies. They can't build Indians fast enough and the factory can only make so many bikes per year---- I get it! That still don't make it right to the guys that owned them. Of course if you never owned one, you could never relate. JMHO as always.

I've known my friend since 1985, and he's worked for Polaris for over 20 years, so yeah, I've ridden a few Victorys. Attached is a picture of the year we rode the brand new Visions, which I named the Bozo bikes, due to their appearance from the front. I'm not a V twin guy, just like I'm not a guy that sticks baseball cards in my spokes to make the vroom vroom noise, so I was never impressed with Victorys. I'm pretty sure I rode more different Victory models than you did, over the years, but is was simply because I didn't want to haul my FJR from Texas to Minnesota, just to ride. Instead, I flew up, he grabbed one from company stock, and away we went; beggars can't be choosers. They did improve substantially from the first year to the last one that I rode; a Cross Country in June of 2016. The transmissions no longer felt and sounded like the ones in the old Farmalls I drove as a young lad in Minnesota, but am I damning with faint praise? Yah, youbetcha.




My whole point to people that piss and moan about Victorys; specifically how Polaris shut the brand down, is that it's just business. If you don't like the way business works, be sure and pull any money you may have in the stock market out, because all businesses operate the same way. Victory had less value to Polaris than Indian did, so Victory was killed off. You bought two Victorys, and that entitled you to ride two Victorys. That's it; no more and no less. You didn't have a relationship with Polaris, you weren't buddies, you simply bought two motorcycles, and were able to ride them.

I'd hate to see how the folks that whine about Victory handled their first breakup...