A rose by any other name: the Enfield Indians

An Indian advertisement from 1955, the first year of the Enfield Indians.

The full range of Enfield-Indian motorcycles as produced in the late 1950s.

The Indian Motorcycle Company was founded in 1901 in Springfield, Massachusetts, by George Hendee and Carl Oscar Hedstrom.  The company is best known for its iconic Scout (introduced in 1920), Chief (introduced in 1922) models-big cruisers with v-twin engines, and some of the most distinctive styling in motorcycle history.  They were renowned for their reliability, performance and handling.  An Indian won the Isle of Man TT in 1911, and Erwin “Cannonball” Baker set a cross-country speed record on one in 1914, among other early racing victories. Burt Munro clocked the fastest time ever officially recorded on an Indian by making 190.07mph on a modified 1920 Scout at Bonneville in 1967, and some Wall of Death riders still use Scouts today.  The left handgrip throttle (as opposed to the right handgrip setup promoted by Harley-Davidson and other manufacturers, which eventually won out) was advertised as ideal for military and police use, since it left the right hand free to fire a handgun, leading to a number of contracts from police forces (the Indian was the first motorcycle adopted by the NYPD in 1907, to chase down runaway horses), and the US Army during the first and second world wars.  In spite of their popularity, the original Indian motorcycle company stopped production in 1953, after struggling to reenter the civilian market following the Second World War.  The name would later be revived and applied to a new generation of big American v-twin motorcycles, but for over forty years (1953-1999) it was kept alive by rebadging foreign machines for sale as Indians. 

The initial crop of rebadged bikes was introduced in1955.  These were Royal Enfields, and included the Woodsman (a 500cc single-cylinder scrambler/trials model), the Trailblazer (a 700cc twin cylinder standard), the Tomahawk (500cc twin super sport), and the Fire Arrow (250cc single). Mechanically they were identical to the motorcycles being sold under the Royal Enfield marque, with cosmetic changes and accessories to help them fill the moccasins recently left empty by Indian Motorcycles.  Advertising literature describes the Trailblazer as “the big red machine”, and promises “real western-type handlebars” on all but the Fire Arrow.  The Trailblazer and Fire Arrow even carried the distinctive Indian head light on the front mudguard.   Later model years included more western-style names, capitalizing on the distinctively American mythology of the cowboy and the Old West: Apache, Westerner, Lance, Hound’s Arrow, and even Chief.  Indian styling cues reached an all-time high with the Chief, sold (under the Matchless-Indian marque) as late as 1961.  This was a big machine, based on the same 700cc Enfield twin as the Trailblazer, but with big mudguards (complete with Indian head light on the front), sidebags, “western-style” bars, and sometimes even a windscreen-except for the engine, not so very different in appearance from the bona fide Chief. 

The Indian brand appeared on everything from Velocettes to mopeds and even Asian-made minibikes until the late 1990s, when the first real revival took place, with production runs from 1999-2003, prior to the opening of the most recent Indian Motorcycle Company (moved from Springfield, MA to King’s Mountain, NC) in 2004.  The brand has now been bought by Polaris, makers of the Victory motorcycle, and while no new designs have appeared, it is probably safe to assume they will closely resemble the iconic v-twin Chief.  Though the Indian marque is now back on American v-twin heavyweight cruisers where it might be said to “belong”, the rebadged machines make up a fascinating chapter in the history of the Indian motorcycle.  The Enfield-Indians are especially interesting-mechanically they’re British bikes, with unmistakably American styling cues from the Indian heritage.