The Endian
– blasphemy or brilliance?
Indian Motorcycles, aided by DiCE magazine, has embarked on a new fourpart series celebrating the ‘First Movers’ – members of the motorcycle industry who have made specific contributions to the two-wheeled world. We here in the OBM Shed suspect that the very first one of this series, which can be found on YouTube, will either have you exploding in rage or nodding your head with interest…
Randy ‘Detroit’ Hayward is the founder of the Traveling Black Museum, a show promoter, and a racer and collector of vintage machinery, including a 1929 Harley-Davidson DL 45, a 1925 Henderson boardtracker, a 1971 Honda chopper built by custom bike, car and van pioneer and legend, Yosemite Sam Radoff and more than a dozen other classic bikes. But it is the motorcycle you see here that will probably provoke the most controversy, for Detroit has a 1929 electric Indian Four.
You read that right, a rare Indian Four which has now been fitted with an electric powertrain (and christened the ‘Endian’).
Built by “some friends and secret wizardry”, the electric motor sits behind the Indian’s decommissioned engine, just ahead of the rear wheel, while battery packs are housed in leather saddlebags.
Detroit makes no apology for what some might call heresy; after all, as he points out, electric vehicles were already old hat by the time this Indian rolled off the production line. Detroit says: “Three years ago, when I first conceptualised what a vintage motorcycle would look like with an electric driveline installed, folks thought I was crazy! I even thought I might be off my rockers to take a bike that is potentially valued at over $100,000 and convert it to an EV. But I’ve always been a strange kid. So why not?”
The project was then put to one side until Detroit got the chance to actually ride an electric motorcycle and was, he says “blown away by the power and the pure essence”. It encouraged him to embrace the future while highlighting its possibilities in a motorcycle almost a hundred years old. He adds: “I haven’t given up internal combustion vehicles but EVs are the future … We are getting ready to SHOCK the vintage motorcycle community.”
Well, what do you think? Blasphemy or brilliance? Check out ‘Detroit Randy Electric 1929 Indian Four’ on YouTube for the video (and some great shots of the Packard Automotive Plant in Detroit, once the most advanced car factory in the world and now the world’s largest abandoned factory – or it will be until demolition starts).