When did Hendee mfg.co.become the Indian motocycle co.become the Indian co.?

[duffeycycles]

indian1.jpgindian2.jpgindian3.jpg

[chicagohen]

Mr. Duffey,

I'm not home to look at my reference material but there may be two time periods to look at. The first is circa 1914/15 when George Hendee and Oscar Hedstrom "retired" (were bought out?) and left Indian after a large public stock offering. To divert for a second, George got interested in "show cows" and raised several prize winning herds on his farm in Suffield, CT. The next period would be in the late 1920's? when the Hendee Manufacturing verbiage was removed from the primary covers. It would be worth contacting one of the usual suspects who have large trade magazine collections. I'm sure there would be articles related to this as it would have been major industry news in the day. I'm speculating that the last name change occurred after the British conglomerate bought the company from du Pont (circa 1940?). Sorry it's not a lot of help.

Ciccalone

[talbot-2]

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Suggest reading the five (5) pages of replies in the thread titled "Why Motocycle". I believe the answer to your quiry may be there.

[duffeycycles]

that covered the 1st change-the 1953 drawings are[ the Indian co.] letterhead

[Sargehere]

The year was 1925, when Hendee Manufacturing Company became Indian Motocycle Company. That's according to The Indian, A History of a Classic American Motorcycle, 1998, by Tod Rafferty, ISBN 1-85833-843-3, published by Brambly Books, Quadrillion Publishing Company, Godalming, Surrey, England, GU7 1XW.
Quoting Tod Rafferty: "Another noteworthy change in 1925 was the company name, which changed from the Hendee Manufacturing Company to the Indian Motorcycle Company" (p.50).

[talbot-2]

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I see what you are referring to in your scans. 1924 -"The Hendee Mfg. Co. ", 1927 - "The Indian Motocycle Co.", and 1953 - "The Indian Co.". Maybe someone has the correct answer.

[Sargehere]

"To make a long story short, so bad were the 1949 Indian lightweights that production had to be suspended, and in 1951 led to complete abandonment of the series. The financial loss and loss of confidence by dealers and customers forced the company to reorganize, split into a manufacturing company (Titeflex Inc.) and a sales company (Indian Sales Corp.) Indian Sales secured rights to the name and the tooling for the old vee twin Chief. The Chief was produced in very limited numbers until early 1953. Indian Sales then went on as a distributor of several makes of British motorcycles, until in 1962, Indian ceased to exist as an operating organization." -- AMCA Co-Founder and Indian employee there at the end, Emmett Moore, writing in The Antique Motorcycle, the club magazine, Vol 20, No. 2, Summer, 1981 (p. 15) The article is entitled "Springfield's Bane, the motorcycle that killed Indian."

So, Duffy, the two years of your original inquiry are 1925 (Herb Wagner puts the date in 1923) and 1951. The company had three names in its lifetime: "The Hendee Manufacturing Company" (1901-1925), "The Indian Motocycle Company" (1925-1951) and "The Indian Company" owned by The Indian Sales Corp. (1951-1962). Perhaps the frugal (or near broke) company was just saving paper, producing that March 20, 1924 drawing of the saddle bolt on a Hendee Mfg. Co. pre-printed plan sheet in 1924, if the corporate name had formally changed the year before.

The Founders, Oscar O. Hedstrom (1871-1960) and George Hendee (1866–1943), sold the business they'd built and retired in 1913 and 1916, respectively. Oscar Hedstrom was persuaded to return to the factory for a few months to help organize large military orders during WWI, in 1917, but he retired again in 1917. But new owners did not change the name of the corporation until 1925. This information also comes from AMCA Co-Founder Emmett Moore, in his article "A Conversation with Oscar Hedstrom" in The Antique Motorcycle, issue of Fall, 1981, p.6.

Emmett Moore interviewed Oscar Hedstrom, then 82, at his home in Portland, Connecticut, in 1953, while Mr. Moore still employed in the Advertising Department of the Indian Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, and before he and Ted Hodgdon, also an Indian employee, and Henry Wing, Sr., and Henry Wing, Jr., presciently founded the Antique Motorcycle Club in 1954 in order to preserve the history of American motorcycling, something they sensed was in danger of being lost if not preserved, after the final demise of Indian.

By the way, the very last batch of fifty Chiefs was built for the PDNY in May, 1953, also according to Emmett Moore, all with Linkert carburetors, as specified in the contract. This date is a fact documented by a photo (found by Jerry Hatfield) of the batch under construction in the Winter, 1981, issue of The Antique Motorcycle (p. 19) with a May, 1953 calendar hanging on the wall. Ailing Indian, in its death throes, had to scrounge the fifty Linkerts from its remaining dealers' stocks, as they couldn't get L & L Manufacturing Company to tool up to provide them such a small batch of carburetors.

Thank you for giving me the impetus to search through my old issues of The Antique Motorcycle, Duffy. I knew I'd read all of that in them, somewhere!

P.S.: Emmett Moore was in the Advertising Department, so he should know, and stated again in the Winter, 1980, issue of the club magazine (on p.11) that the "Company name was Hendee Mfg. Co. until 1925" -- Article was entitled, "Half-Century Road Test," a report upon owning his 1930 101 Scout for fifty years.

[duffeycycles]

35indian.jpgsarge -here is a drawing from '35 with[ the Indian co. ] heading

[Sargehere]

It's an interesting thread. Corporately, I don't think you'll find that Indian was ever, formally, "The Indian Company." Was it an informal name accepted internally that was held over through many of the changes in ownership and branding? It was "The Indian Motorcycle Company" from the '20s and through the DuPont ownership and the failed "Torque" experiment. Even after it was broken up and the motorcycle portion sold to the Brits in the 'Fifties, it was formally "Indian Sales Corporation." Maybe they printed a LOT of those drawing sheets back in the 'Twenties and just didn't throw them away. They did bear the accepted common name of the product, "Indian." Just conjecture.

Are you looking to date the formal corporate changes? I wouldn't go by them. The formal business records, records of Springfield and the State of Massachusetts would tell the story precisely, I think.