So, Charlie Franklin, as Indian's chief designer, what do you propose? Your answer: "Let's build a mousetrap."
"Huh?" the reader asks.
"Yes, indeed," Charlie answers, adding, "If you can build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path unto your door."
That's an old saying which is not quite true - more on that later - but a good place to launch the story. True or not, Indian believes the mousetrap anecdote. Armed with a war chest of profits, backed by a glorious history, sporting the world's best known motorcycle name, a return to former dominance is but a matter of building the better motorcycle. You, Charlie Franklin, will design, and the Wigwam will build, an Indian motorcycle so advanced, so sophisticated, and so superior that it can't be resisted. The new motorcycle will be costly to build, but a breakout into massive sales will yield increased production efficiencies. Thus, superior features will combine with lower cost. The new motorcycle will bring back the glory days of the first decade. The new motorcycle and the old magic of the Indian name will take care of the salesmanship. Dealers will again have an easy time of it, being mainly order takers. Theirs but to keep the motorcycles dry and clean, and to fill out the paperwork of bikes coming and going. Lucky them.
Meanwhile, in the two decades of its life, the American motorcycle industry has lost its focus. Forgotten for so long is the all-important task of first converting prospects into motorcyclists. You, Charlie Franklin, will make the problem clear again, and you will have the answer to the problem.
In 1919 the world's motorcycles are still tied to old ideas about construction. In the old days there were user-friendly machines that resembled the popular pedal bikes, and it had been easy to recruit new "motocycle" riders from the ranks of bicyclists. But by 1919, the friendly bicycle-related pioneer models are all but forgotten, supplanted by ever heavier, bulkier, longer, and higher motorcycles. When a potential convert walks up to a typical1919 American twin-cylinder model, he learns the saddle is only a couple of inches short of his waistline. The handlebars reach far back like those of a wheelbarrow, to accommodate a rider who sits on the "back row" over the forward tread of the rear tire. If he's 5 foot 9 inches, he can sit on the saddle and just manage to plant his shoe soles on the ground; any shorter, and it's tippy-toe time. As the potential buyer looks over the typical big American motorcycle, he studies a variety of brackets and clips that, seemingly as afterthoughts, secure the engine and transmission (gearbox) to the single-loop pedal-bike-style frame.
Whether an Indian, a Harley-Davidson, an Excelsior, or the obscure Reading-Standard, the machine appears to be the product of one of those committees that sets out to design a horse but instead produces a camel. It is difficult for the student customer to decide whether the engine and transmission have been compromised to fit into the frame, or whether the frame is a last-minute accommodation to the powerplant designers who dictate matters at the motorcycle company. Company? One company? To the neophyte, it appears equally possible that the various tacked together components are built by scattered plants and then merely assembled by the so-called motorcycle manufacturer whose name is on the tank. Although that isn't the case in the United States, motorcycles across the Atlantic are built just that way-and on both sides of the pond the big bikes look largely the same. They are all contraptions first and motorcycles second.
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