Handsome victory
Best looking bike of the year so far? This Indian FTR1200 special edition is in with a shout
For decades Harley struggled to take commercial advantage of their dominance in American flat-track, eventually coming out with the XR1000 road bike in 1983. No such bother for Indian – the FTR1200 was already a plausible road-going version of the all-conquering FTR750 racer and now there’s this: the £15,995 Championship Edition. Built to celebrate Indian’s fifth consecutive victory in America’s flat-track championship, the new FTR has the race bike’s paint scheme, a badge on the tank listing the five championships, plus loads of carbon, high end Sachs forks and shock, and the obligatory titanium Akrapovic exhaust.
Also, despite the standard FTR1200 changing to 17in wheels and sticky rubber this year to try and help convince buyers it’s a sporty naked rather than a street tracker-styled cruiser, the special edition goes back to a 19in front and 18in rear wheel, like the flat-track racer. It also gets flat-track style tyres.
You get the feeling Indian’s marketing team could have done without that particular about-face. ‘We’re focused on trying to let people know that the FTR is a fantastic sporty road bike,’ says Indian’s UK spokesman Ian Austin, who goes on to explain that when it launched, lots of people thought it was a cruiser because it was American.
Indian sales are doing well in the UK – up 26 percent in 2021 compared with 2020 – but the FTR1200 is not the top-seller. ‘It sells a lot through word of mouth – the owners love them,’ says Ian. ‘But it’s the Scout family that sells the most for us. The FTR is approaching that, but as with many manufacturers we’ve had supply chain issues. We’ve started assembling the FTR in Poland and that’s helped avoid the US tariff issues.’ Fifteen Championship Edition FTR1200S will be coming to the UK and as Bike went to press, nine had already been sold.