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Century Chief for sale
(by Guy ‘Guido’ Allen,June 18, 2021)
One of two Century Chief prototypes has washed up in Australia and is now up for sale at Au$67,500 (US$50,500, GB£36,600).
These machines are part of the long and surprisingly complex history of various hopefuls trying to revive the Indian motorcycle name in one form or another.
This particular attempt dates back to 1994, when USA businessman Wayne Baughman raked together what was said to be a few million dollars to develop this V-twin.
He didn't actually own or buy the Indian brand, instead settling for using a few of the styling queues and borrowing the Chief model name. There was hope the company may eventually secure rights to the brand.
As for the bike, it ran a liquid-cooled pushrod twin displacing 1646cc and used three valves per cylinder. With a five-speed transmission and belt final drive, it claimed a healthy 98 horses at 4300rpm and 122Nm of torque.
The project however got no further than the two prototypes shown here.
One of them (shown at top) has lobbed in Australia and is now on offer through Classic Motorcycle Sales.
The other resides at the National Motorcycle Museum in Iowa, USA.
Indian meanwhile went on to produce V-twins, first through the Indian Motorcycle Company of America, aka the Gilroy factory, which went bust in 2003. That design was picked up and further developed by Stellican around 2009 and was briefly in production at Kings Mountain, before being bought out by Polaris which relaunched with a new platform in 2014.
See the story on our Kings Mountain Chief, here
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