I had an opportunity to ride all three Indian models about a month ago. Our local HD dealership is a large mega store for HD and the owner also owns the original building that still has Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki. They also handle quads and PWC's.
One of the conditions of the new owner getting the HD franchise was to have a separate building for HD. They did that right next door and it's a BIG store now.
The Motorsports group just took on Indian and Indian has a similar requirement; separate showroom etc. So they built on the front just for the Indian line.
Anyway... I took a Friday afternoon off work and took the test rides. I road my '09 SERG there for the test rides. They had a route setup of about 5 or 6 miles. This was some city street riding, two lane road and freeway.
All three road like a Cadillac. I say that as they handled the bumps on the city street with cushy ease, but I did notice a bit of floating wandering in the corners. But my wife would have said that it rode better than our SERG.
I did notice some vibration in mid to high rpm ranges, but at a low speed in high gear it really took off without hesitation and not pings or rattles. So I think it has more mid torque than my 110".
The shifting was good, but not great. All three still had the clunk when going from neutral into gear about like my Harley. The shifting was good with maybe not as much force to shift as my bike.
I rode the Chieftain first with the variable height windshield. As soon as we got on the somewhat rough city street, the windshield rattled in the inner brackets and was quite annoying. It did a good job though of cutting down the buffeting at highway speeds. The power up/down was easy to use and I see that as a nice feature.
The brakes felt good, but the big thing I found was that the running boards were wider and without any issues at all I could get my whole foot on the board, unlike my SERG where the outside of my foot rides off the outer edge. All the controls seemed to be in the right spots. They would take a bit to get used to, as mentioned the turn signals on the left side only.
So after all three test rides, between the next group out, I took my SERG over the same route and all things considered, I would not trade my '09 SERG for any of the new Indians. At highway speeds my '09 SERG is smoother, motor wise and I would say my bike rides more like a street tuned Camaro versus the Cadillac ride of the Indians. Again, my wife would say the ride of the Indian is better because I'm sure she would like cush versus feel.
I do think they are very nice looking and I do like the retro styling.
If I were new to the market or even had an older Harley twin cam looking to get a new ride, I would consider a new Indian as it would blow away any of the older Harleys in power and ride. I'm just not sold on them compared to my SERG.
I think the owners writing the reviews have a better long term feel for them, but my trice short rides is not enough to sway me away from HD.
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Topic: I'm test riding the Indian Chieftain on Friday - will report back (Read 12042 times)