Motorcycle Classics – September-October 2019

http://www.MotorcycleClassics.com 47

That’s not to say that nobody else

ever tried to build a volume production

street legal version of an American oval-

track racer before — just that nobody yet

showed how this could be done in a mod-

ern context, while getting it as indisput-

ably right as America’s oldest motorcycle

manufacturer has now done with this new

model. OK, Harley tried once before with

its flawed and hence short-lived XR1200

back in 2008, but nobody else, until now.

The FTR 1200 made its global debut

last October at Intermot, and is now in

production — with initial 2019 manu-

facturing projections already doubled in

response to massive worldwide customer

demand. Initially, this will exclusively be

built at Indian’s U.S. plant at Spirit Lake,

Iowa — but later this summer a second

assembly line will kick off at the massive

factory in Opole, Poland, where Indian’s

parent company Polaris Corp. has been

making offroad vehicles since 2014. This

will enable Indian to assemble complete

knockdown kits of bikes manufactured in

Iowa then shipped to Poland for comple-

tion, to hold prices down by circumvent-

ing the 31-percent EU taxes currently

applied to complete motorcycles entirely

manufactured in the U.S. as an anti-

Trump measure, which are set to rise to

66 percent in June 2021 — well, unless

someone blinks first.

Moreover, if anyone’s entitled to pro-

duce today’s definitive Street Tracker, it’s

Indian, thanks to its current dominance

of American Flat Track (AFT) racing. The

2017-2018 seasons saw Indian immedi-

ately spank all other brands on its return

to competition after a 70-year absence,

with its FTR 750 winning 17 of the 18 races

held in the 2018 AFT season, thus earning

the No. 1 plate in successive years cour-

tesy of Jared Mees.

Clearly inspired by the FTR 750 in

both styling and engineering, the base

model 2019 FTR 1200 will cost $13,499

in the U.S., while the uprated FTR 1200

S starts at $15,499. The FTR 1200 is only

available in black with a black frame,

and has a round analog speedometer

with an LCD screen for seven different

data readings, including tachometer,

fuel gauge, gear indicator, mileage, etc.

Meanwhile, the 1200 S has a full-color,

4.3-inch customizable LCD touch screen

digital dash, with phone connectivity and

Bluetooth for easy mobile device pairing.

This also delivers access exclusively on

the S-variant to Rain, Road and Sport

riding modes (the standard model just

has the Road mapping, but is still ride-by-

wire), plus traction control, anti-wheelie

and ABS. While the FTR 1200 S shares the

same Sachs suspension hardware with

the stock bike — a 43mm upside-down

fork set at a 26.3-degree rake with 130mm

of trail, matched to an offset cantilever

INDIAN FTR

1200/1200 S

Story by Alan Cathcart

Photos by Felix Romero and Ula Serra

Born on the dirt, built for the street

E

Every so often a manufacturer conceives a new model that’s unlike

anything anyone did previously — and in doing so invents a new

kind of motorcycle. Think BMW with its dual-purpose GS models,

Ducati with the Monster or Yamaha with the original Ténéré — all of

them so immediately and hugely successful that they ended up being

copied by other manufacturers, and proved to be prototypes for a

new generic type of bike. Now, with its new FTR 1200 Street Tracker,

Indian may well have joined that illustrious club.