Return of the Indian Chief

Return of the Indian Chief

COMPETITION FOR HARLEY-DAVIDSON?

IT SEEMED FOR a while that all anybody would see or hear of a reborn Indian motorcycle would be found in the blizzard of legal paperwork blowing between the two men each intent on resurrecting the grand old made-in-the-USA marque. But now, Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Inc. boss Wayne Baughman has uncloaked the first prototype of a machine he says will be the 1995 Indian Chief. All Baughman has to do now to make his project a reality, he says, is raise a couple of million dollars.

The machine, a non-runner with a wood-and-plastic, mocked-up engine, was shown to a gathering of dealers and prospective investors in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Baughman’s home base. Some of those gathered expressed disappointment that the long-awaited bike was a non-runner. But most of Baughman’s 120 guests were impressed with the bright red Chief.

“It’s got all the right Indian cues: 5-gallon teardrop Big Chief fuel tank, deeply valanced fenders, fringed leather saddle, tank-top instruments,” said a prospective dealer from Colorado, who added, “and I like the modem updates-the fuel-injection, triple disc brakes, belt final drive, and a single-shock rear suspension that looks for all the world like a rigid frame.”

Baughman says he plans to build 5000 bikes the first year, and 14,000 within 60 months, but his financing and production plans remain vague, and some at the meeting questioned his ability to fund the project. Baughman, who retails sheepskin seat covers in a small store adjacent to Indian’s modest “headquarters,” estimates a total of about $6 million will be needed to get the Indian into production, and says he’s spent less than $1 million so far. That sum, he says, includes the design, production and testing of six running

1665cc overhead-valve V-Twin engines by Batten Corp., the Michigan firm that built the prototypes of the engines that powered Oldsmobile’s 257-mph Aerotech speed-record car.

Baughman’s expenditures to date also include his legal fees in his much-publicized dispute with Phillip Zanghi over the rights to use the Indian name.

Phone calls to Zanghi’s last known locations in Connecticut were not answered, and calls to his firm, Indian Motocycle Company Inc., in Springfield, Massachusetts, were answered only by a recorded disconnect message.

Lindsay Brooke