Introduction to Indian Motorcycles’ Comeback

You got that? It’s been a quiet couple of years for Indian motorcycles in India, but the Polaris-owned company is set to make a big comeback in 2025 with the launch of the new Scout range. Now, there’s going to be eight models with two different engines. Each model has three variants, and the one we have with us today is the Scout Bobber Limited.

Engine Options

And that means that our bike gets the bigger 1250 cc engine. If you go for the Scout 60 series bikes, then you get a 999 cc engine. Both of them are liquid-cooled V-twins, and they really are a big part of the riding experience with this motorcycle.

Scout Overview & Design

But let’s begin with a sort of refresher of what the Scout is. This is Indian’s entry-level motorcycle. It’s always been this long, low liquid-cooled V-twin motorcycle with a really powerful engine. And it’s a sort of sporty cruiser. And I mean sporty cruiser in that it’s not a cornering motorcycle. You’ll see that it grinds down pegs very easily, but it’s sporty in the way that the engine responds. It’s a bike that eggs you to ride hard. It’s an engine that also doesn’t mind riding slowly.

Uh, this is a really multi-talented motorcycle. It has some limitations, which we’ll get to, but it is a really good-looking bike, and I think one of the reasons why you’d want to buy this is just for the way it looks. Because we have the bobber, it’s on 16-inch wheels at both ends, with fat tires. That is a 130-section front. And unusually, it’s on Pirelli MT60 RS, which is something you normally see on light adventure motorcycles or scramblers, but it sort of gives this bike more of that badass vibe, which really goes with the whole thing.

Ergonomics and Riding Position

Okay, given how low this motorcycle is, you won’t be surprised to know that the seat height is under 650 mm. For a tall person, that’s usually really bad news. But the Indian puts your feet quite far forward. And in general, this is a spacious riding position for someone who’s tall and also accommodating for someone who’s short and wants to get their legs down easily. It’s also a strangely involving riding position because you have this stretch forward to the bars. So, you’re sitting in a sort of sideways U, and I found it to be really quite engaging, encouraging, makes you want to ride the bike hard, makes you feel connected with the motorcycle.

Ride Comfort and Suspension

It’s also pleasantly comfortable to a point. Now, usually with this sort of riding position, everything gets taken care of by your back. But the Indian suspension has a decent amount of pliancy in it. Not a lot of wheel travel. It’s about 120 mm of suspension travel in the front, 50 mm at the rear shocks. But the seat itself is soft. It’s plush. The suspension has a bit of give. And if you’re on decently smooth roads, it’s really not a problem. Even if they’re slightly bumpy. But when you get to Mumbai, where we have badly made roads, patched roads, and you’re just bouncing all over the place, you will run into limitations here. So if you have somewhere with even reasonably smooth roads, you will actually get along with this motorcycle quite well. That is the comfort factor.

The 1250cc Engine

Now let’s talk about the big deal, which is this engine. Indians have always made really nice engines, and this 1250 cc motor is no different. It’s a powerful thing. It makes 105 horsepower over 110 new m of torque, and it’s really responsive. Now, even though this is a liquid-cooled engine, it still has that sort of rumbly, offbeat chug at low revs that you instantly know that this is an American V-twin. It feels right, it sounds right.

Exhaust Sound

Speaking of sound, it’s not an obnoxiously loud motorcycle, but it’s loud and it’s engaging. And from the reader’s point of view, it’s really good. Have a listen. This is that low, slow, thumpy rev, but if you like twin engines, you’re going to love that sound.

Engine Character and Performance

I also like the duality of this motor. On the one hand, uh, the idle is slightly high for a slow-revving American V-twin. It’s about 1,250 RPM, but it’s not horribly chuggy at low revs. You do want to keep the revs slightly above maybe 14,500 RPM, but from 1500 RPM onwards, you can just stick it in a higher gear, cruise casually if you want to. The gearing is also very widely spaced because there’s so much torque on offer. They don’t need to give you short gearing. So, it’s tall gears, and I found myself rarely in sixth gear, at least within the city. Out on the highway, stick it in 680 onwards, it’s a nice, pleasant cruise.

But there is also a really exciting, aggressive side to this engine. The moment you cross about 2,000 RPM, it starts to pull hard. And it’s that relentless, aggressive V-twin pull. The engine revs to over 7,000 RPM. And you will cross 100 km/h in what feels like 3, 3 and 1/2 seconds. It surges on beyond 150, 160 if you give it the room, and then you run into the limitations of, you know, wind blast and things like that. So, it’s not a high-speed motorcycle, but it can accelerate really aggressively.

Traction Control and Fueling

I also discovered that if you turn off the traction control, this thing is very happy to slide around. And on big bikes, that’s usually a really unnerving thing because they can snap, and they don’t feel very controllable. But this is low and long. So, you get a good sense of when it’s breaking traction, how it’s breaking traction. You can control it on the throttle, and you’re not doing this at very high speeds. So, you can have some fun if you turn off the traction control. In general, fueling is very good. It’s smooth. There are no hiccups. There’s no hesitation on normal riding. I did find that when you’re in a big jam and you come into the traffic and pull in the clutch, sometimes the engine can stall. I wonder if that’s got something to do with our fuel quality.

Fuel Requirements and Compatibility

The bike does want 95 octane. The first time I filled it up, I could only get regular pump gas. And it ran well, but you get the sense that it would run a little happier on higher octane fuel. On the topic of fuel, very important. This says E5 E10 on the fuel tank, and that’s quite troubling in today’s E20 era. But Polaris assures us that this motorcycle is actually E20 compliant. It only has these stickers because it’s in Europe, and in Europe, they don’t really mandate E20 right now. But they say that this bike has been homologated according to E20, and they have the documentation for it. So that is good news.

City Riding and Heat Management

As for riding in big city traffic, well, it’s a big American V-twin. Some things will not change. Uh, but some things are quite nice. The clutch is for a bike like this, really not very heavy. I mean, if you get stuck in a long jam, yes, that gets slightly tiring, but again, for a big American twin, this is a pretty reasonable clutch. Fueling again helps you in big city traffic. As for heat, well, if you get stuck and you’re stuck at a signal or you’re stuck in a jam for a long time, there’s a vast amount of heat coming off this motorcycle. I picked up the bike from Tan yesterday, and uh, area unknown to me, long ride back home. I got lost. I got stuck in a lot of traffic. There was a lot of heat, but I never got a warning from the bike that it was about to overheat.

There’s also no sign of what the engine temperature is, so it wasn’t clear to me whether I was edging into a danger zone, but I didn’t find a point where the bike wanted to shut off because of a heating issue. That being said, I was stuck in jams that were also moving. I don’t think you’d want to get on this bike in a 45-minute 1 1-hour jam where you’re just sitting there because there’s a lot of heat coming off it, and that’s not what this bike is for.

Handling and Dynamics

As for the actual riding experience, I already touched on the fact that it does pretty well on reasonable roads. Uh, it’s also a nice handler. It’s very stable. High-speed stability is good. It turns without too much effort. Now, this is just 5 kilos more than a Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650. And it is vastly more motorcycle than that in terms of performance. So, it’s not a huge, heavy, cumbersome thing that you might expect from a brand like Indian or Harley-Davidson. Many of these bikes weigh 300 400 kilos. This feels quite manageable.

The low seat, getting your feet down easily. Handlebar weight is also not very heavy. And I suspect that if you go for a different Scout model with a thinner front tire, it’ll probably be even lighter to steer. So, from a riding point of view, this thing is actually pretty reasonable. The turning radius is not bad. It doesn’t take a huge effort to ride.

Lean Angle and Ground Clearance

It only has 30° of lean angle, 31° to be precise. So, you will scrape it very easily, even on wet roads. In fact, you want to cater your riding style to keep the bike upright because it’s going to scrape its pegs too easily, and that’s actually going to be a limitation. It’s not going to be something fun that you want to chase. But that’s the case with all motorcycles that look like this. Now, talking about looks, it looks fantastic, long and low, but there’s a downside to that, and that is the ground clearance.

It is really, really restricted. It’s 109 mm. Yesterday I got lost getting out of Tane, and I found myself in some places where you really wouldn’t want to take a bike like this. To its credit, it got me through everything, but with extreme caution. Uh, I was able to get over some steep speed breakers, but I literally came to a crawl on some of them. I actually got off the bike, and you know, walked it over, and I don’t weigh very much. I’m about 80 kilos in gear. So if you’re a heavy rider or if you’ve got a pillion on board, you want to be really careful with the ground clearance. And that’s also because the chassis ends about here.

So this is all very expensive engine components. You don’t want to be hitting that. That is something that you really need to keep in mind with this bike and also its rivals from Harley-Davidson, like the Sportster and the Nightster. It’s just the way these motorcycles are.

Braking Performance

As for the braking performance, it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a big American cruiser. There’s not a lot of feel or feedback from the front. You want to use your whole hand to stop there. And it’s also down to the fact that there’s only one disc, which lets you admire that nice-looking wheel. The rear brake does the majority of the work. You want to use both brakes in conjunction. It works well enough, but for something that’s this fast, I would have liked to have more braking performance.

Quality, Fit, and Finish

Now, let’s talk about quality, fit, and finish. And this has been a given with Indian motorcycles for a long time. They’re actually very nice looking. Attention to detail in areas like the master cylinder. Uh, the switch gear is pretty good. It does come across as a nicely made motorcycle. But on the features end, some things make you really wonder, shouldn’t I be getting more for the money I’m paying for this bike? For example, the fuel filler cap has no lock. And then you have the most hilarious key with this bike, which looks like it came off a bicycle. It’s really tiny, and it just doesn’t match a motorcycle like this.

Display and Technology

There’s also the display. Now, I am of the belief that motorcycles like this should be pure, not full of technology. Just give you the essentials. And in that sense, you do get the essentials. You get dual-channel ABS, switchable traction control, and there are three riding modes: rain, standard, and sport. You do feel a difference in response in all three.

I found myself spending my time in standard most of the time because sport just encourages you to behave badly, and that’s best saved for short durations. What I don’t like about this bike is that the menus are all controlled by this one little toggle switch here. You hit it once to enter the menu, and then you have to give it a long press to confirm your selection. And this is something you really have to get good at because if you make a mistake, you will scroll past that menu, and then you have to cycle through everything all over again. Trip one, trip two, distance to empty. So, if you want to turn off the traction control or change the riding mode, you really have to focus on what you’re doing.

Quirks and Quirks

There’s also the fuel gauge, which is a little quirky. Uh, this is only a 13-litre fuel tank, despite how big it looks. So, with such a big, powerful engine, it’s not going to take you very far. But, this fuel gauge was showing me completely full even after I covered 150 km after filling it up. So, that’s not a gauge that I would trust very explicitly. You’d also want to go by what the trip meter is telling you. Another strange quirk with this motorcycle is that if you stall it in traffic, and that can happen, the moment the engine stalls, the display says low oil warning. And the first few times it happens, you think, “Oh boy, we’re in trouble here.” But then you eventually learn to ignore it.

Practicality: The Fender Issue

Another quirk with this motorcycle is what it does to you in the monsoon. As you can see, there is no rear fender at all. And no matter how much you clean this bike, within the first 100 m it’s going to fling everything back onto you, onto your back and onto the motorcycle itself. Chopped fenders look great, but they are not practical. And if you intend to use this motorcycle in the monsoon, genuinely use it. Take some on pillion, go out for a ride. We recommend going for some of the Scout models that have a longer fender. Bear in mind, many of the models actually have this chopped rear fender.

Accessories and Price

And that brings us to accessories and price. As far as I can tell, this is an accessory. Uh, the engine guards are an accessory. How much they cost, I cannot tell you because Indian has not shared the prices with us yet. In fact, we don’t even know what this bike is going to cost. The prices will come out, I think, a day after our video goes live.

So, we will put that in a pinned comment below. But I’m given to understand that the scout range should start below 15 lakh rupees. In fact, the Scout Bobber will also hopefully start under 15 lakh rupees, but this limited version will probably be above 15 lakhs. That puts it on par with the Harley-Davidson Sportster S, which is a more powerful motorcycle, and it comes from a more recognisable brand, which also has a wider dealership reach. Indian has just six official dealers across the country.

Verdict

As has always been the case, Indian motorcycles are really charming, engaging to ride, and they work to a reasonable extent on our roads. I’ve always enjoyed riding them, and I really enjoyed riding this, and even while my tailbone is a little sore right now, the smile this thing has put on my face has overshadowed that pain by a good extent. So, it’s not a problem. So, if you’re looking for a beautiful cruiser motorcycle, but also something that’s sporty, exciting to ride, and has a low seat height, this is really worth looking at because it is a fun motorcycle. And that’s even though it has its quirks and its limitations.