Indian Superbike Project
Indian Street Cruiser Project
Client: Britten Motorcycles Ltd
Two new bikes were proposed in an attempt to resurrect the Indian Motorcycle marque in the United States.
The first of these projects was a conceptual design and mock up of a 1000cc V-Twin superbike for racing, to be developed from the Britten V-1000 superbike.
This bike was to be only made in small numbers to secure ownership of the trademark. The project progressed through concept sketches, an overall engine layout and cases design and into a full size clay model.
The second design was for a large capacity street cruiser motorcycle, the Indian Chief. This was to be the main production bike. This project progressed to concept sketches and initial renderings designed to try and span the 50 year hiatus in production.
An artificial timeline was created which evolved the design in 5 year increments starting from the 1947 Indian Chief. This was done in order to speculate where the design may have got to, had production been continuous.
Both projects came to an abrupt halt when John Britten announced he had terminal cancer. Amazingly, John continued to work on his ideas for Indian almost to the day he died. More than 10 years afterwards, there still occasionally appear concept drawings and articles in international motorcycle magazines speculating about what might have been.
Role: Contributing industrial designer.
Tasks: Brand development, manual concept renderings, human factors, full size clay model.
Note: Claims of copyright ownership of these renderings made in publications by the estate of JK Britten are incorrect. I have never sold the ownership of copyright of any of my freelance design work.