How Indian Motorcycle Survived the Great Depression
Recently, I wrote about British industrialist Dennis Poore saving Norton, Triumph, BSA and other motorcycle manufacturers from ruin between 1966 and 1973. Nearly 40 years prior in the United States, Excelsior-Henderson was third place in the US motorcycle market behind Indian and Harley-Davidson.
When the Great Depression wreaked havoc in late October 1929, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell an estimated 15 percent by 1932 (by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1 percent from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession). In many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II in 1939. Bicycle czar Ignaz Schwinn—who purchased Excelsior in 1912 and Henderson in 1917—ceased motorcycle operations in September 1931.
How did Indian survive? We have the great-grandson of industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours, patriarch of the mighty du Pont family, to thank.