I live near enough to Gilroy. When the Indian operation stopped I drove down
there a couple of times armed with a bunch of cash. I bought several S&S
engine parts, plus others and then resold it all on eBay for a profit. I
spent
nearly 4 thousand dollars on their close out sale stuff. My profit margin
was not big enough for me to try to do something like that again. I made some
money - but not enough to justify the time spent.
I also rescued an old beat up foot stool that had been painted in red - it
had been used in the factory. I pulled it out of the dumpster the last day I
was there as kind of a momento.
Also - to me - the factory did not look very sophisticated. They had a ways
to go in terms of real modernization if they were going to keep a large
volume of sales going. And so much of their chrome pieces like the headlights
and
turn lights, etc were made in China. While digging through the isles of
the parts segment I saw a lot of Chinese made stuff that just did not have a
real quality look about it - at least up close to my eyes.
I also recall that a few of their starters that I bought and resold were
originally sourced from Korea - and I think that the same was true of their
gear
boxes. It appeared to me that many offshore parts went into the final assembly
of this recent iteration of the Indian Marque.
Nothing heard about Indian other than the last investement group was plugging
in millions of dollars and had to finally give up.
And Indian also decided to put plug a LOT of money into their own new engine
- which from what I have read pretty much finished them off. Beautiful engine
at that - I htink called the Powerstroke 100.
They might have fared better had they stayed with the S&S engines for a bit
more time that they were assembling in their Gilroy plant.
I think that this is why Victory is such a beautiful well built MC - it had
thet backing of a much larger corporation to do things right. And in the very
early days when they did hit a glitch with their transmissions, that corporate
backing from Polaris came in handy to allow them to get it sorted out.
I am really enjoying this "Motorcyle Forum" - but it is now time to head back
to the garage to do some work on my favorite vehicle of all - my 59 Austin
Healey Bugeye Sprite!
Kirk
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