Floyd Clymer friend or foe of Indian?
Personally I would say a friend although his business ethics could be questionable he managed to produce some really good Indian’s in the seventies and it kept the brand name alive for a number of years. Let’s face it after Indian Sales stopped trading and the last hurrah was Matchless motorcycles with Indian badges it was the last link with the old Springfield machines, the fact that Harley considered buying the name and locking it away forever in a safe would have meant the end of the famous marque, fortunately that never happened even know in the 21st Century they must have regretted that decision. Clymer owed the fledging Cycle magazine and sold it in the mid sixties to Pederson Publishing for $300,000 to become extremely wealthy and being a motorcycle buff and ex Indian rider he initially contacted Sam Pierce the one man in the states that never gave up on Indian produced his own even when the Springfield factory existed for them to evaluate and produce. Clymer produced but one Scout in a Munch frame, but what he did do was produce a whole range of motorcycles from mini bikes up to 750’s all badged Indian and some very,very nice machines such as Indian Velocette 500 and the Indian-Enfield 750 all with Italian rolling chassis there were other prototypes with a Ducati, Norton, pictures of Triumph engined versions exist and everybody has seen pictures of the Volvo car engine Munch version, these were all only stop gaps to eventually reproduce complete USA Indians but unfortunately Clymer passed away and all of these steps came to nothing till 1998 when CMC bought the name Indian to produce the first Gilroy versions which would eventually be bought after a hiccup by Polaris, in my mind he could have been the saviour but in the end loathed by some of not reincarnating Chiefs and Scouts that were dated by WW11
Floyd Clymer (link)