Comments on: American Sportbike – The Eller Industries Story

By: Soulfur

Soulfur — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:55:43 +0000

Every day I get up and give my Excelsior Henderson Super X a nice pat on the rump -

By: ROHORN

ROHORN — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:14:08 +0000

Doug (hoyt),

GREAT article – thanks!!!!!

B. Case,

Couldn’t agree more.

By: John

John — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:43:33 +0000

I’m late with this response but wanted to add that I remember the Indian courtroom stuff and was also very disapointed like most everyone else here. The way I remember it the judge who knew absolutly zero about moyorcycles was to blame for the way it turned out.

By: Doug (hoyt)

Doug (hoyt) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:40:00 +0000

gt- agreed. Cruiser sales’ impact on a given company’s financial statements will probably change during the industry’s next business cycle but less than a decade ago they were the cash cow category by a drastic margin. There will still be a healthy demand for cruisers.

Den – thanks for the information. I did not know about that cycle. The 841 pre-dates Moto Guzzi’s transverse, longitudinal crank v-twin.

Are there other transverse, longitudinal crank v-twin engine configurations besides Victoria and Indian before 1960?

By: Den

Den — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:31:25 +0000

Great article Doug, being from Australia I was not that familiar with the story. What a pity this never came to fruition, both for motorcyclists and indigenous people.

I think the styling of the bike is very contemporary even though the design is a decade old. As for heritage, Indian did a low volume build of transverse v-twins (here is a short article by a mate of mine;
http://www.mcnews.com.au/ClassicsCustoms/Indian/Indian841.htm)

I can’t agree more with the guys talking about capacity, I don’t have much interest in a big, heavy, expensive 1400 V-twin. I find the Suzuki v-twins a little bit dull even though they are priced right. The Aprilia 750 is a great bike to ride and very high tech, although high tech and Italian do scare me a bit. Shiver is a rubbish name though, maybe it would sound better it Italian (can’t be as bad as Toyota’s toyolet though!.) If yamaha made a bigger version of the srv 250 I think I would be in love.