1928 Indian Ace?

[4 Ridin' Rev]

So I get the March-April magazine the other day. I'm thumbing through it and the picture on the bottom of page 77 catches my eye. "An Indian Ace! Cool," I think to myself. Then I read the caption... Granted, I'm a 4 Cylinder guy. But come on - even Wikipedia has this right! The Indian Ace came out in 1927 - it was advertised as, among other things, "The Collegiate Four" Indian introduced the first Indian 4 - the Model 401 in 1928. They're easy to tell apart, even for a novice - the Ace has a girder/spring fork, the 401 has Indian's signature leaf-spring fork. OK - maybe the caption had it that way in the 1990 magazine. If so, shouldn't there have been a sidebar or something with the correct information? Was there a correction in the next issue? Were other self-proclaimed armchair editor 4 Cylinder 'experts' up in arms? (hehehe...) There 's already enough bad information out there; the AMCA needs be sure that what appears in our magazine is correct.

[jcrawford]

4 Ridin' Rev,
Well the good news is you got your magazine. Can't thumb through mine until it gets here, which is always delayed a long time "up" here (Vancouver).

[AFJ]

So I get the March-April magazine the other day. I'm thumbing through it and the picture on the bottom of page 77 catches my eye. "An Indian Ace! Cool," I think to myself. Then I read the caption... Granted, I'm a 4 Cylinder guy. But come on - even Wikipedia has this right! The Indian Ace came out in 1927 - it was advertised as, among other things, "The Collegiate Four" Indian introduced the first Indian 4 - the Model 401 in 1928. They're easy to tell apart, even for a novice - the Ace has a girder/spring fork, the 401 has Indian's signature leaf-spring fork. OK - maybe the caption had it that way in the 1990 magazine. If so, shouldn't there have been a sidebar or something with the correct information? Was there a correction in the next issue? Were other self-proclaimed armchair editor 4 Cylinder 'experts' up in arms? (hehehe...) There 's already enough bad information out there; the AMCA needs be sure that what appears in our magazine is correct.

I don't know if Wikipedia "has this right" - my impression is that it is often inaccurate from things I do know about.

The early history of the Michigan "Ace" to "Ace" to Indian Ace to Indian 401 is covered in some detail in books by Ted Hodgdon and Harry Sucher.

The Blossberg based Ace production of perhaps 300 motorcycles ceased in the spring of 1925. In the summer of 1926 Michigan Motors moved the operation to Detroit where "several hundred" Aces were assembled. Indian bought the remains of Michigan Motors and all the parts, motorcycles, etc. in December, 1926. In January/February, 1927 Indian displayed an "Ace" motorcycle on their stand at the New York Motorcycle show and took orders for new Ace motorcycles. Tooling parts and incomplete motorcycles from Detroit began to arrive at Springfield in March, 1927. In April, 1927 advertisements the 4 cylinder bike was still called the "ACE FOUR" . The announcement of the 1928 Indian lineup in August, 1927 shows the Indian Ace with the Ace name under the Indian script and mentions the change to pressure lubrication. The Fours were still basically of Ace design. It was not until August 1928, when the 1929 models were announced that the tank label changed to "Indian 4", designated as the "Model 401" and the redesigned Ace began to use frame, fork and other components from the 101 Scout. There was a mid-year frame change due to vibration from the single downtube of the earlier Ace to the twin Scout type. The Model 402 was announced in June, 1929 and had the 5-bearing crank instead of the 3-bearing Ace type.

The Indian Ace in the 1990 and March/April 2015 AMC magazines looks like a 1928.

AFJ