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NEWS
Bagged It!
For more than a century, Indian Motorcycle has carried racing in its bloodline. From Burt Munro’ s legendary runs across the Bonneville Salt Flats in the 1960s to today’ s track-dominating efforts in the King of the Baggers series, the brand has built a reputation on one principle: the pursuit of speed. Now, that legacy has been reignited on the very same salt where Munro etched his name into history.
In collaboration with performance specialists S & S Cycle and with backing from Mission Foods, Indian Motorcycle Racing took its King of the Baggers race machine out of the closed circuits and onto the endless white canvas of Bonneville. The goal wasn’ t just to chase a number, it was to test the limits of what a 600-pound V-twin bagger could achieve in the most iconic proving ground of all.
At the controls was Tyler O’ Hara, no stranger to defying expectations. A two-time King of the Baggers Champion and a member of the Indian Wrecking Crew, O’ Hara piloted the S & S-built Indian Challenger down the salt in a series of blistering runs that pushed the motorcycle to the very edge of 200 mph. In doing so, he not only celebrated Indian’ s deep history at Bonneville but also carved a new chapter into its racing legacy.
The results spoke for themselves: O’ Hara set a new AMA record in the 2000cc APS-AG class, clocking 194.384 mph. The previous record of 169.828 mph, set in 1972 by J. Angerer on a Triumph, stood for more than five decades before falling to Indian’ s modern V-twin missile.“ Bonneville is hallowed ground, not just for Indian
Motorcycle, but for all of motorsports,” said Gary Gray, Vice President of Product Technology, Racing, and Service at Indian Motorcycle.“ Our engineers and partners at S & S have spent decades chasing speed on the salt flats, and we’ ve long talked about seeing what our King of the Baggers Indian Challenger could do there.
" While we’ re proud to have broken a record, this effort was about more than setting a land speed mark, it was about honouring the legends who came before us and pushing ourselves to go as fast as we could.”
The achievement isn’ t just a statistic. For Indian and S & S Cycle, it’ s a symbol of how far the modern bagger platform has evolved. Once thought of purely as heavyweight touring machines, baggers have been transformed into competitive race bikes through the King of the Baggers series, where teams have extracted remarkable performance from motorcycles designed to carry saddlebags and passengers. Taking that concept to Bonneville was both a bold statement and a fitting homage to the relentless spirit of speed that has defined motorcycling since its earliest days.
And for O’ Hara, the run was more than a number on a timing sheet. It was a nod to Munro and every rider who ever pointed a motorcycle across the salt, seeking to go faster than anyone had before. The Challenger’ s thunderous charge at Bonneville wasn’ t just about rewriting the record books, it was about proving that the hunger for speed, innovation, and legacy still defines Indian Motorcycle more than 120 years after its founding.
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