2022 Indian Scout Rogue Review

I said, on these web pages a couple years ago: “Hasn’t Sons of Anarchy been gone for five years?” But here we are in 2022, and the One Percenter Club Bike-look is still going strong. You know the drill—high bars, bikini fairing, blacked-out everything. From there, the formula is open to interpretation.

By Billy Bartels | Photography by Barry Hathaway

It’s not like Indian hasn’t dabbled in blacked-out styles. The Scout Bobber features a semi blacked-out look, with a headlight nacelle (not quite a fairing), but the bars are low. The Scout Bobber Twenty took it a touch farther with mini-apes, which the Rogue shares, but went for a retro floating seat that ruins the Club Guy stance.

The Rogue pulls it all together with a true mini-fairing, high bars, a fully blacked-out look, bar-end mirrors, and a 19-inch wagon wheel up front. If the others were prospects, this is the full-patch member of the club. As with most of the other Scouts, there’s a Sixty version that offers a smaller 60 cubic-inch engine, along with one less transmission gear and slightly different trim, for a lower price.

Ironically, the Scout Rogue might be the most practical of the bunch. One of the cheaper Scouts (though the one we tested with ABS and a color other than black adds $1400 to the price), and that little fairing actually deflects a fair bit of wind off of your chest.

The mini-apes are mini enough to put your fists in the air, but not enough to make it awkward or cause the blood to drain from your digits. It’s a nice stretch to peg and bar for smaller riders, while taller riders (like myself) are still in a relaxed ergonomic triangle.

The Rogue’s seat doesn’t work well for me. There are two camps in seat design: soft and plush versus firm and supportive. I’m thoroughly on Team Firm and the Rogue wasn’t. It’s good for maybe 75 miles before I fidget, but I can tell from the first 10 seconds that I’m sinking almost to the seat pan. If you’re north of 200 pounds, you’re probably buying a replacement. I was happy that the soft foam extended to the little bump stop at the back of the seat, so I could slide back and sit on that to change it up. As with all bikes that have just a solo seat, there are no other places to put your feet that you don’t buy and install.

The 19-inch front tire is the one unique, major change from the Scouts of the past. Unlike some other manufacturers, a switch to a 19 doesn’t need to make the bike slow steering. The wide, low-profile tire is part of it. Metzeler’s Cruisetec 130/60×19 rides on the same steering geometry of 29 degrees of rake with 0.7-inches of trail as the 16s on the other Scouts. Not bouncing along on a bulbous high-profile 16-inch tire, with a similar circumference, handling on the Rogue is crisp and light.

The Rogue’s 1133cc liquid-cooled V-twin is the same as the previous Scouts’ engines, in a mild state of tune (unlike Indian’s fire-breathing FTR), meaning it’s got a mile-wide powerband, but also a large “happy place.” Most cruisers are content at about 3000 rpm, as is the Rogue, but it’s also just as happy at 4000, where cruisers will go but they start to sound decidedly unhappy. The torque of the Scout’s engine is everywhere, it cruises easily at lower rpm, while not getting all vibey at higher rpm; it literally doesn’t care where you shift it. Shifting the six-speed gearbox (five-speeds on the Rogue Sixty) is smooth and reliable, and mostly keyed to how much engine braking you want and what you like your engine harmonics to sound like.

If this all sounds like it adds up to an aggressive cruiser with an attitude problem, you’d be right. It’s relatively light, puts you in a good position to ride aggressively, revs out when needed, holds a line while leaned over, and has plenty of ABS-assisted braking.

It’s fun to ride fast, as we did down California’s Highway 33 in Ventura County—a sinuous stretch up a canyon, then over a mountain range. But when, inevitably, you catch a car, it’s also happy to lope along at a sedate pace. Aside from my aforementioned issue with soft foam seats, which is easily sorted via the aftermarket, it was a comfy perch to take in California’s stellar scenery for a while until a passing lane revealed itself.

Unlike some attitude cruisers it doesn’t feel inherently impractical, with fists in the breeze, but good wind protection. An engine that screams past 8000 rpm, but will putt along at 2000 without stumbling. As a continuation of the Indian’s Scout lineage, most current Scout parts and accessories (as well as aftermarket parts) will fit the Rogue. So, with its identical frame geometry, it means this and the other Scouts can be parts swapping buddies across the board. Not only do you get all of the accessories in the catalog, but you could also have a very unique looking Bobber, for example, by swapping some front-end parts.

If you want to look for a dark side (pun intended) here, it’s just that the style itself is extremely derivative. It’s got Indian’s proprietary funky slab-sided tank thing going on, but when you get past that, it’s another extra on a One Percenter TV show. The cast 19-inch front wheel seems a lot like what Harley put out through the ’80s and ’90s. That said, it was only a couple decades ago that 90 percent of cruisers looked like a Fat Boy knockoff, so maybe I’m just old and grumpy.

Maybe, at the rate that the manufacturers ape (pun also intended) TV shows, sometime in the 2030s, we’ll get a resurgence of the ’90s Chrome Pony, with ape hangers and long fishtails, as shown on Mayans M.C. CN

2022 Indian Scout Rogue Specifications

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