EXCLUSIVE: Water-Cooled Victory Coming Soon!

WORDS: Ben Purvis

Victory Motorcycles have been out of the limelight lately—outshined by parent company Polaris’ intense focus reviving its sister brand, Indian—but now Victory is set to come back with a vengeance by launching a new range of high-performance, liquid-cooled cruisers.

We’ve uncovered drawings of no fewer than four top-secret designs for new Victory models, all with water-cooled V-twin engines. With Indian assuming the role of classic American cruiser to compete with Harley-Davidson, Victory is now free to carve out a new niche as a maker of modern, high-performance V-twins—think of something to compete with Ducati’s Diavel, rather than Harley’s Road King. In an interview appearing in the October 2013 issue, Polaris VP of Motorcycles, Steve Menneto, told us that Victory would be retooled “to focus on performance and innovation as core brand values.” These drawings are clear evidence that this change is underway.

The remaining trio features what appears to be a quite different engine, still a water-cooled, DOHC V-twin but with a more stylized external appearance and a transmission with the drive belt located on the right-hand side. These also share the same wheels and swingarm, all of which appear to be taken straight from the existing Victory Judge model. The implication here is that these concepts are part of an internal design contest, all using the Judge chassis as a template for the appearance of the new water-cooled engine. Likely one of these will be selected to progress towards production

Victory1: Styled by Polaris Senior Industrial Designer Richard Christoph, this look is distinguished by large radiator shrouds that enclose much of the front cylinder. An angular rear fender appears to incorporate a modular seat, its shape echoing the style line framing the engine compartment.

Victory3: The work of former Tesla and Volvo car designer Ryan Black-Macken, the last of the Judge-based designs is more flowing and futuristic than the others, with a smooth, integrated look connecting the tank to the tail and an elongated headlight fairing that completely hides the lens in profile.

Victory2: The work of Salvador Gonzales, another Polaris designer, this aggressive design has a distinctive hooded headlight and a sharp-ended pillion seat that juts out and above the rear fender. The low-mounted radiator is separate from the main body, leaving more of the engine exposed.

Any speculation regarding engine capacity or performance potential would be little more than guesswork at the moment, but expect Polaris to answers those questions for us sooner than later. Menneto told us last year, “It's about time the Victory had a new powertrain.”