6 reasons the world’s a lesser place without Victory Motorcycles

1. We never saw that big-bore nakedbike
The 2015 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb contender built by Roland Sands and powered by a stonking 1300cc Victory Motorcycles powerplant had big-bore nakedbike fans all over the world salivating at what production bike it was surely a high-profile precursor to. Ridden by Cycle World’s Don Canet, it qualified first in its exhibition class and, despite being the fastest bike on the perilous mountain, a crash on race ultimately spelled the end of Canet’s campaign. The 2014 winner Jeremy Toye rode it to a class win the following year where we learnt the engine was destined for the firm’s Octane power cruiser. Whether the high-profile and unconventional Project 156 was ever destined to go any further than the rather conventional cruiser, we’ll never know. And the death of Victory Motorcycles has left a lot of people, like me, wondering.

2. Good old fashioned competition
Sure, Polaris Industries has the revered and historical Indian Motorcycles brand to stick it to the wily old Harley-Davidson mob, but the axing of Victory Motorcycles ultimately meant lopping off one third of the American-built cruiser scene. Victory by no means made up one third of the American-built cruiser segment, or else it wouldn’t have got the chop, but three’s a crowd and when the scene, and the conversations, and the rivalries and whatever else goes along with big American-made cruiser gets reduced, then so too does a little bit of thumping V-twin spirit.

3. No one did Baggers like Victory
It’s true. Well over 10 years ago in 2006 when Victory Motorcycles released drawings of what it called the Victory Vision Concept, the motorcycle world thought the over the top whopper would stay firmly filed in the firm’s concept cabinet. But in 2007, when the Victory Vision Tour emerged as a production bike weighing almost half a tonne with rider and pillion on board, its 10-disc CD stacker, its air-adjustable suspension and its wild styled front fairing measuring over 1.14 metres wide, it showed what a bit of out-of-the-box thinking could achieve.

4. The Empulse TT
Okay, so the Victory Empulse TT — which was more or less a rebranded Brammo carrying a Victory badge after Polaris acquired the electric bike maker — will probably end up emerging as an Indian somewhere down the track, but you can’t go past the fact that Victory was a far better fit for the emerging technology than what’s essentially one of the oldest marques on the planet. Around the same time that the newly-branded Victory Empluse was gaining traction in the US market, Victory was pushing itself as a capable electric campaigner with a podium finish in the electric Zero TT class on the Isle of Man. Burying the Victory brand means burying a whole pile of money spent on marketing, riders, travel and development for the TT racer, too.

5. Those gaudy graphics
Victory didn’t care what anyone else thought and for that reason, I’ll miss the brand that never saw its 21st birthday. Boasting some of the gaudiest and out-there graphics in the history of production motorcycles, Victory Motorcycles knew how to turn heads. It wasn’t just the wild paint work either, the brand offered some of the best model names in recent times, too. Hard Ball, King Pin, Jackpot and Hammer are just a few of the best monikers that generations to come might one day covet.

6. Arlen Ness
For bringing us back to the wild styling of the Victory-badged cruisers, a lot of which was the work of well-known custom motorcycle guru Arlen Ness. And while the highly acclaimed designer, along with his son Corey and grandson Zach, is probably still doing very well for himself turning out his signature custom styled machinery, Victory Motorcycles offered him relatively consistent global exposure that he’d otherwise not have.