2025 INDIAN SCOUT SPORT – MY SUMMER PSYCHOSIS

I really have to stay the Hell off bikes like the Scout Sport when the weather is warm and the riding is sweet. The matte-black bastard shot me straight back to my youth like an antisocial tattooed cannonball.

Sorry, but some of my irrational outlaw shit remains hardwired – and the half-open jack-knife riding position, the “You’re just gonna have to put your hot stripper-arse in a cab, baby” single-seat, and the hate-black paint still speaks to me.

I actively considered sawing off the hideous stock exhaust, and leaving 30 righteous centimetres of front and rear headers, just like the good old days – and then telling the good people at Indian this somehow happened when I left in out front of a pub one night.

Yes, I am truly a cursed and ruined soul. Normal people should stay away from me.

After attending the recent Scout press launch (which you may read HERE), I had decided I very much liked the 101 iteration. You’ll recall I said it “charmed me like a hot, tattooed chick in a scandalous miniskirt waving a bottle of tequila at me”. An entirely fair call, and one which remains.

You might also recall my second favourite of the all-new Scout range was the Sport. I viewed it exactly as it was – a less-blinged version of the 101, but with the same super-cool ergos and rational steering geometry. I have suffered too many years and too many miles wrestling a 16-inch-front-and-rear rig to ever want to go back to that. Give me a 19-incher up front and we both dance a little better.

So, I have been dancing with the Scout Sport. Indian was kind enough to offer me one as part of its MotoPG Podcast sponsorship – and it all fit wonderfully with the Indian Summer concept I had pitched. I also got an FTR Sport, which Simmo is riding at the moment, and soon Freido and Tug might get a crack. Maybe. It’s hard to say. Summer can be a time of selfishness. It’s hot and people cannot think clearly.

I, however, find great clarity barrelling along deserted roads in the late afternoon, arcing meaningfully through long sweepers, turning aimlessly down unknown-to-me single-laners, and just riding for the sake of riding. The only three things I wish for when I’m doing this on the Scout Sport is the death of helmet laws, a set of hellacious exhausts, and one or two of them bars you only get in the States, where there’s a jukebox and the bartender free-pours your whiskey and doesn’t ask for money until you leave.

Told you I’m wired different. Don’t ever have any doubts about that.

The Scout Sport seems designed precisely for that kinda stuff. Indian has done an excellent job in upgrading, re-designing, and re-thinking its Scout range. It looks better, it goes better, it handles better, and the proof of that lies in the fact I now really like a bike I was not a fan of before. I could rat-bastard on this like a thousand bastards.

Which brings me to a fascinating conversation I had with my Arab friend, Ahmed, the other day…

I went down to the post office to see what might be in my PO box. Across the road from the post office is a newly-opened tobacconist which sells Chinese cigarettes, American soft drinks, and big-arse Lego sets of the Star Wars Republic Cruiser and a pair of Lego Ferraris. This is one of three new tobacconists that have opened in Singo in the last two years – and they are all run by the same family from Granville in Sydney.

I’m convinced I actually know some of their uncles and cousins. I once lived in Granville, and now and again when I bump into him, Ahmed and I explore our mutual acquaintances. But on this day, Ahmed saw the Scout Sport I parked in front of his shop, and came out to speak bikes to me.

“As-Salamu Alaykum,” he smiled.

“Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,” I smiled back.

“What’s this, bra?” he asked, walking around the Sport. “An Indian? They making these again?”

“Have been for a while. Where have you been hiding?”

“Working, bra, working. Always busy, yuleh. Listen, can you get me a good deal on a V-Rod? Cash.”

“No. They don’t make them anymore. And this thing will eat a V-Rod. Why don’t you get one of these?”

Ahmed pondered this briefly, and did another lap around the Scout.

“Bra,” he said with a grin. “I had V-Rod. It would do 240, bra! It was mad. Nothing would beat it.”

“Was it supercharged?” I asked.

“Nah, nah,” he shook his head. “Stock with pipes.”

“It never did 240, Ahmed. Ever.”

“Swear to God!” Ahmed declared.

“This will eat a V-Rod. I’m telling you.”

“But the back-tyre is so skinny, bra. How much horsepower does it have?”

“Enough to eat a V-Rod,” I shrugged. “Look, a V-Rod maybe chucked out about 115 on a good day and had about 117 Nm of torque. This makes 105 and has 108Nm.”

“See! It’s got heaps less power!”

“That’s not ‘heaps’, and there’s another really important thing you gotta remember. The V-Rod weighed 307kg. This weighs 248. It’s 60kg lighter.”

Ahmed blinked and did another lap around the Scout.

See also

Motoring

0

2022 YAMAHA R7 – “What kinda fool takes this thing on a 600km day-ride?”

18 April 20225

“Power to weight, huh, bra?”

I nodded. Ahmed is many things, and one of those things understands power-to-weight, and one of them refers to me as a bra.

“Sit on it,” I said.

Ahmed sat on it and the smile split his face. “Feels just like a V-Rod, bra.”

I nodded. “You can rev-bomb the shit out if it too. And chuck sick burnouts.”

“Can you get a fat rear-tyre for it?”

“I’m sure you can get anything you want if you want it bad enough, but then it won’t go around corners very well.”

“The V-Rod handled great, bra,” he lied to me.

There’s a point in these conversations have to end, because further enlightenment is not possible for either party. I know this because I have had many such conversations.

“You should go ride one of these,” I said to Ahmed. “Then we can have another conversation.”

“Can you get a me a good deal on one for cash?” he asked.

“I can ask.”

But of course, I never will, because asking the importer what kind of cash-deal can be arranged for Ahmed through me, followed by me handing Indian wads of rubber-banded cash in exchange for a bike, is not how the world I now live in works.

Things have changed. But happily, there’s still blokes like Ahmed, and bikes like the Indian Scout Sport to remind me of how the world once was.