Indian Motorcycle concept sports girder fork

It takes a big person to admit when you’re wrong. In the grand scheme of history, I may not actually be wrong about this one, but in the present and foreseeable future I'm clearly not right.

In a recent article on Indian Motorcycle’s 2026 model year line-up, I observed that all of the brand’s Thunderstroke-powered baggers and tourers had been dropped from the European line-up.

The Thunderstroke engine is Indian’s air-cooled V-twin powerplant, currently boasting a standard capacity of 1901cc. It’s been the beating heart of Indian’s cruisers since the brand relaunched under Polaris leadership back in 2014.

With the brand set to fully break from Polaris at the start of next year, I implied in my article that the new face of Indian might want to make a splash in the motorcycling world by abandoning its air-cooled platform entirely and equipping its cruisers with the liquid-cooled PowerPlus V-twin engine, as it has with its baggers and tourers in the European market.

As I say, I was definitely not right about that. And this bike proves it.

This unique beauty has been given the rather straightforward name of Indian Concept Girder. It was revealed this week at the EICMA show in Milan and elicited an audible “Ooooh” from those gathered at the brand’s presentation.

Indian has offered very little information about this machine, but a small bit of media copy states that the bike is “powered by the legendary Thunderstroke 116 V-Twin, which remains the only big twin on the market delivering pure, air-cooled, unfiltered performance.”

The Indian Concept Girder is clearly designed to pay respect to the brand’s past – Indian first introduced a girder fork to the Chief in 1946 and it quickly became a defining part of the bike’s aesthetic – but you don’t put this much effort into just looking backwards. 

Built by a number of Indian’s design talents – including Lead Modeller Jan-Erik Gustafsson, Lead Designer Bartek Krawzykowski, Concept Engineer Nicholas Roch, and Studio Engineer Mike Philpott – the bike is a statement of what’s important to Indian. As such, it arguably gives us a sense of where the brand hopes to go as it bids farewell to Polaris’ leadership.

In addition to suggesting that Indian will hold on to the air-cooled Thunderstroke engine for as long as it can, the concept bike draws attention to Indian’s engineering and design traditions. And, of course, in the livery there’s a nod to Burt Munro – the legend who, in Indian’s words “broke land speed records and redefined what motorcycles could achieve.”

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