"Victory... The red headed stepchild to Polaris"? By Ivan Rodriguez

This was an incredibly difficult decision for me, my team and the Polaris Board of Directors,” said Polaris Industries Chairman and CEO Scott Wine. “Over the past 18 years, we have invested not only resources, but our hearts and souls, into forging the Victory Motorcycles brand, and we are exceptionally proud of what our team has accomplished. Since inception, our teams have designed and produced nearly 60 Victory models that have been honored with 25 of the industry’s top awards. The experience, knowledge, infrastructure and capability we’ve built in those 18 years gave us the confidence to acquire and develop the Indian Motorcycle brand, so I would like to express my gratitude to everyone associated with Victory Motorcycles and celebrate your many contributions.” 

Courtesy of American Iron Magazine 

So it was announced all over that Polaris the parent company to both Victory and Indian motorcycles has dropped the Victory motorcycle. It's a shame Indian was actually the stepchild and unfortunately Victory got left behind. For the last 5 years since acquiring Indian in 2011, Polaris corp has been slowly turning it down on Victory and setting their focus and efforts on Indian concentrating its design and engineering on the resurrected "first" American Motorcycle. It seems that the executive's and engineering team at Polaris, think that resurrecting an old classic will once again put them on the competitive road to being number one. 

If you ask me they should've left Indian motorcycles exactly where it was. I personally think that this is just a passing stage for the resurrected motorcycle, as it was back in the mid 90s when Indian tried making their come back. I see it is only successful because it is an old remembered classic that is winning the hearts of the old-school bikers...for now. 

But make no mistake, I could be wrong but I think it will once again come to pass... that the Indian will once again become a memory and Polaris will be back to just manufacturing their ATVs...ultimately creating and additional memory in the vault of American classics.....Victory.

Stay tuned this weekend as I discuss more on the topic of farewell victory on

The Cycleshack Podcast 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻🎙