{"id":959243,"date":"2026-11-10T10:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T10:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/959243\/"},"modified":"2026-11-10T10:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T10:28:09","slug":"dumped-by-harley-in-king-of-the-baggers-indian-challenges-honda-bmw-and-ducati-to-join-the-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/959243\/","title":{"rendered":"Dumped by Harley in King of the Baggers, Indian Challenges Honda, BMW, and Ducati to Join the Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some seven years ago, America’s two main motorcycle makers, Harley-Davidson and Indian, joined forces for a racing series unlike anything the world had seen before. Called King of the Baggers (KOTB), it called on touring motorcycles with bags attached to race for glory.<\/p>\n

For almost seven years, the two companies took turns winning races and championships, and the relationship between them seemed unbreakable. Yet, not long ago, Harley-Davidson created another bagger racing series, one meant exclusively for its bikes: the Bagger World Cup<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unlike King of the Baggers, Bagger World Cup is international, taking place alongside MotoGP races at various tracks. The inaugural season held this year, it seems, proved exciting enough for the Milwaukee brand to decide to exit KOTB and focus exclusively on its World Cup.<\/p>\n

The decision was announced in early October, and it kind of took everyone by surprise, especially rival Indian, which saw itself left all by itself in the competition, and MotoAmerica, the driving force behind the series. The two have been scrambling ever since to keep the series going, and this week, it seems, a solution has been found.<\/p>\n

Indian<\/a> announced this week that it is backing no less than ten teams for the upcoming 2027 and 2028 KOTB seasons, through something called the ARO. That’s short for American Racing Operations, and it represents a brand-new factory-supported team and rider program. This effort will be used to offer factory support at all levels, from bike transport and race maintenance to the tires the Indian Challenger motorcycles will use in the competition.<\/p>\n

Indian will run ARO in partnership with long-time ally Vance & Hines Motorsports, and leaves the room open for individual sponsors to get in board. Moreover, the program also has a financial side that cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n

Indian talks about more than $150,000 in contingency for teams and riders over a season, including a $20,000 bonus and a brand-new Indian Challenger<\/a> two-wheeler for the season championship winners.<\/p>\n

The ten teams that will be supported through ARO are not known yet, as the bike maker and MotoAmerica are only now inviting professional teams and riders to join. What is more exciting than that is the fact that now, left without a rival to fight against, Indian is looking elsewhere for competition.<\/p>\n

Claiming that it wants to race against the best bagger bikes in the world, the American motorcycle maker challenged three other bike makers, Honda, BMW, and Ducati, to join the series.<\/p>\n

The invitation is too fresh for the Japanese and European companies to have had time to think it over, but I am already tingling with excitement at the prospects of seeing the Challenger take on the Gold Wing, the R 18 (or K 1600), or whatever the Italians from Ducati can turn into something resembling an American-style bagger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some seven years ago, America’s two main motorcycle makers, Harley-Davidson and Indian, joined forces for a racing series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,526710,526709,526708,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-959243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bagger","tag-indian-motorcycle","tag-king-of-the-baggers","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}