14 DAY TRIAL // Indian Motorcycles was a very famous motorcycle brand back in the first half of the twentieth century, but it suffered bankruptcy eventually. Now, though, the brand has been resurrected, 60 years after the fall.
And we have 3D printing technology to thank for that. Normally, to create the blueprint of a bike and then to make a prototype takes 15 months. That's a pretty long time to market.
Polaris came up with a new way of doing it though, a mix of paper and 3D printing. In the end, they were able to bring out a working prototype in 3 months instead.
Traditional and modern prototyping techniques were used to make three new bikes, all of which will debut this year: Indian Chief Classic, the Indian Chief Vintage, and the Chieftain. The assembly is done in Spirit Lake, Iowa.
Just so you don't get the wrong idea, Indian Motorcycles is not an Indian company. It is, in fact, an American one. Or was, from 1901 until, as we said, it went bankrupt in 1953.
The brand remained, and was bought repeatedly between then and April 2011, when Polaris Industries finally got its hands on it and started the steady process of finally reviving it.
Polaris, the parent company of Victory Motorcycles, makes leisure and off-road vehicles, usually, but its experience with snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles (and Victory motorcycles of course), helped greatly.
And with the help of 3D printing, it was able to invent those three models we have mentioned before just between August 5, 2011 and the present day. That's 27 months, give or take.