Shortly after Polaris announced the recent purchase of the Indian Motorcycle brand name, they issued another press release announcing they would be moving production of Indians to one of their own facilities in Spirit Lake, Iowa. The previous manufacturer, Indian Motorcycles Limited, had been building the bikes in Kings Mountain, North Carolina.
While this comes as bad news for the North Carolina job market, it makes sense for Polaris. They are already producing Victory motorcycles at the Iowa plant, as well as some other Polaris products. We don’t expect there to be many new jobs created at that facility, at least not in the near future. Polaris already has most of the production components and plenty of manpower in place to add the brand to the assembly floor for a modest investment.
In other Polaris news, they also announced they reached an agreement to purchase Global Electric Motorcar from Chrysler Group LLC. GEM manufactures two, four- and six-passenger electric vehicles, as well as several green utility truck models in Fargo, North Dakota. Future plans for GEM have not yet been announced as the sale will not be completed until this summer.