Indian building new model called the Chief Dark Horse

According to documents filed the California Air Resource Board, it seems Indian is planning a new model called the Chief Dark Horse.

The documents (found here), show the bike is planned as a 2016 model. That means we’ll likely see it officially unveiled sometime this summer. Also interesting is that the bike is listed as being 10 kg lighter than a standard Chief Classic or Chief Vintage, with a listed “equivalent inertial mass” of 470 kg – the other bikes come in at 480 kg (that isn’t a wet weight/dry weight figure; the Chief Classic weighs 370 kg wet, and the Chief Vintage weighs 379 kg wet).

So what do all these assorted bits of information indicate? It seems Indian is going the route Victory and Harley-Davidson and most of the Japanese competition have already traveled so well. In order to drop prices, they’ll likely give a cruiser the “blacked-out” look, slathering it in matte black paint. And this is just a guess, but seeing that it’s apparently going to be lighter, we’d guess the bike will get a bit of a bob job – Harley-Davidson and Victory already make factory bobbers, and it’s likely Indian will follow suit.