On November 1, 2003, I flew to Los Angeles to attend a support rally for the second incarnation of an American legend. Defunct since 1953, the fabled Indian Motorcycle Company was kick-started back to life in 1999. But four years later it found itself, once again, on the verge of extinction. Organized by the Indian Riders Group, the $20 rally buy-in included T-shirt, rally pin, and a 12-mile ride from Indian’s flagship dealership in Marina del Rey to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Hollywood.
By one o’clock hundreds of second-generation Indians were thundering up the ramp to the Petersen’s rooftop parking lot. Manufactured in Gilroy, four hours’ ride north, the new Indians were spectacular in ensemble: multihued, graceful, and powerful-looking. In contrast with the vintage (or first-generation) rallies I’ve attended, there wasn’t a graybeard or leaky old bike to be seen. Indeed, these riders were mostly strapping workingman types, in their twenties and thirties. On arrival, they greeted one another warmly, arranged their bikes for the cameras, swapped the latest gossip about the embattled company’s prospects. But when its deposed CEO Frank O’Connell rose to address them, they fell immediately silent.
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