CIO — You hear it before you see it. A thunderous growl announces its arrival. Heads turn. People stare at the sleek, valanced fenders, the gleaming chrome and the classic Indian Motorcycle logo that 50 years ago stood for what some people call the best motorcycle ever made.
Is this a ghost? After all, the company died in 1953 from its reliance on Army contracts and a crumbling dealer network. Well, Indian is back, and the revived company and its current bikes have a new rumble wrapped in a style and a brand from the past, recovered by a $1.3 million investment in technology systems.
Frank O’Connell, the new Indian Motorcycle Company of America’s CEO, says the company has used this investment to build a dealer and consumer franchise in a way that companies with legacy components cannot. "We intend to be experts in designing and engineering and building our brand," O’Connell says. "Information technology will allow us to be flexible in terms of assembling bikes that consumers want without being strapped with huge manufacturing facilities, big plants and tooling."
The new Gilroy, Calif.-based Indian is building its business processes around a set of heavyweight ERP applications. In the process, it has built a computer-savvy network for dealers and encouraged them to link to the company’s extranet for communications, bulletins and account references.
Indian’s new chiefs have a brand panache and evocative nostalgia that has earned them devoted fans. "Indian was held in highest esteem and through the early 1950s had one of the foremost reputations for quality motorcycles," says Mark Mederski, executive director of the American Motorcycle Heritage Foundation (which operates the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum), based in Pickerington, Ohio. "The brand has never gone away. The motorcycle itself had a reputation for quality and such character with those dark, skirted fenders, flowing lines and beautifully painted metal."
Allan Girdler, amateur historian and author of The Harley-Davidson and Indian Wars, unabashedly gushes that the original Indian Sport Scout was "a revelation, a complete knockout that some people still consider the best motorcycle ever made."
Even with all this brand affection, the 21st century Indian Motorcycle Company of America faces many speed bumps on its road to rebirth. As it builds its current business, it has to design an entirely new line of motorcycles with a completely new engine. At the same time, it has to build interest in the bikes made today while convincing a semiskeptical motorcycle public that its big plans for the future are worth paying attention to?even if the company’s current bikes aren’t held in the highest regard.
