Indian FTR Discontinued
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Indian has discontinued the FTR (formerly known as the FTR 1200), officially closing the door on the flat track-inspired motorcycle that debuted in 2019. Rumors of the FTR’s demise had been spreading through word of mouth and across various online forums and subreddits for months, but we’ve now got official news from Indian’s parent company, Polaris Industries.
The final confirmation comes not in an official press release, or a “final edition” special, but as a small detail in a a couple of footnotes and a single sentence in Polaris Q4 2024 earnings presentation: “The Company realized certain costs associated with the wind down of the FTR product line beginning in the fourth quarter of 2024.”
It’s an ignoble end to a bike that held so much promise when it was announced. A street tracker with a 1,203cc V-Twin engine housed in a trellis frame, the FTR 1200 stood out against the field of heavyweight cruisers and full-dressed tourers that typically bore the Made-in-the-USA tag.
The decision comes just as the bike that inspired it, Indian’s FTR750, is no longer eligible to compete in American Flat Track racing, ending a dominant run of eight consecutive Grand National and Manufacturer championships.
The FTR was also originally designed to be modular, allowing for a variety of uses, but the only results we saw were a couple of different trims and a slightly more off-road capable FTR Rally model.
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We don’t know how many FTRs Indian has sold across its six years on the market (Polaris keeps a tight grip on sales numbers) but it clearly wasn’t enough to keep it viable, especially with it requiring a small update to become Euro 5+ compliant and continue being homologated for Europe.
We do know that ending production of the FTR plus other corporate restructuring contributed $11.2 million in non-GAAP gross profit adjustments for Polaris’ On Road segment. Those adjustments helped push the segment’s adjusted gross profit to $29.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, down from $31.7 million reported in the same quarter of 2023 (which did not include a similar adjustment).
Will Indian replace the FTR with a new model? That’s hard to envision at this point, especially with the FTR750 no longer competing in AFT. The new Indian Scout platform with its 1,250cc SpeedPlus engine checks a few of the FTR’s boxes, but the Scouts are still distinctly cruisers and not a one-to-one replacement.
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Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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I love this bike ... truth be told the ONLY Harley I ever liked was their flat tracker from back in the day and this Indian reminds me of it... decades ago when the Evel movie came out the local theatre had an XR 750 in the lobby. I can still remember the huge pipes on one side and the two K&N filters on the other.....
I’ve never owned an Indian motorcycle, but considered the FTR at one time. Never bought one because it was too heavy (514 lbs) compared to the competition. It was also too long (87.5”) and I couldn’t stand the swingarm license plate bracket arm, so ugly. Yes, you could pay extra for the optional normal plate, but the bike was already too expensive for its class. Overall, less the license plate thing, it did look pretty cool. It is sad to see it discontinued. I’m not a cruiser fan, so no Indian in my moto future.