2025 Indian Scout 101 Blends Old-School Cool With Modern Muscle

Welcome to the party, pal! When Harley-Davidson launched the new Sportster lineup back in 2021, it brought a big engine and lots of power to the mid-size cruiser game. The Sportster pushes out between 90 and 121 horsepower, while the prior-generation Indian Scout managed just 78 ponies with its inexpensive Sixty line and 100 horses for the full-fat models. With impressive competition from the Bar and Shield, Indian went with a clean sheet design for its new Scout, giving it a fresh chassis, a fresh engine, and fresh styling. Was it worth it? In two words: hell yeah.

Full disclosure: Indian flew me to San Francisco to ride the 2025 Scout lineup. The ride was split into two days with the sport-focused models on one day and the cruiser crowd on the other day. I ate lots of great food and slept in two different hotels with a view of the ocean. I had a great time.

While Harley is still producing just two bikes on the Sportster platform, Indian launched the Scout with five distinct models in two categories. The Bobber, Classic, and Super are style-forward cruisers packed with goodies, and the Sport and 101 are stripped-back machines with a dedication to speed. All five models are based around a new tubular steel frame with alloy subframes and the new SpeedPlus 1250-cc watercooled V-twin engine. The Bobber, Classic, Super, and Sport all get the same 105-hp output, while the 101 is given a slight bump to 111 ponies. Technically, because they’re all built on the same platform, these Scout models are all modular. You can mix and match pretty much any of the parts to make your bike your own. If you want a 101 with a big windshield and bags, you can do that. If you want a full-chrome Classic with mid-controls and bar-end mirrors, you can do that, too.

On the first day of the ride event, which took us from the Golden Gate Bridge to the beach in Santa Cruz, I swapped between Scouts Bobber, Classic, and Super. They’re all variations on a common cruiser theme, and I’ve covered them in a separate piece. The second day was a twist-and-turn blast through the mountain roads inland heading back north to San Francisco. While I had a little bit of time on the Sport, I spent most of my day on the 101, which was totally fine by me.

As good as the Scout Sport is, I was very impressed by the top-of-the-line 101. I’m not sure I really noticed the extra six horsepower of the 101, but there were a ton of other parts that made its $17,000 price tag make sense. You can immediately tell what this bike is about when you look at it. It’s got a techy four-inch round touchscreen digital dash, gold inverted forks and piggyback rear shocks, dual-front Brembo brake components, blacked-out everything, 6-inch bar risers, and a quarter fairing. There’s a lot of throwback SoCal scene going on here, mixed with some quality components. It’s a peg-scraping good time.

At around 550 pounds the 101 Scout isn’t exactly a lightweight, but it’s a full 10 pounds lighter than the outgoing Scout models. The engineers at Indian must have been really keeping track of the ounces and pounds, because the new steel-frame bike is lighter than the old all-aluminum bike. Astounding. All that said, it’s about 10 percent heavier than Harley’s more-powerful Sportster S, which is exactly the same price as the 101 Scout.