Attention long chopper aficionados! We’ve reached the final reveal of Indian Motorcycle’s FORGED Series for 2024 and Unique Custom Cycles’ raked out, long-fork Indian Scout may look simple, but it’s anything but.

UCC owner, Ronna Noren, built the water-cooled performance cruiser into a long chop for recipient Mikkey Dee of The Scorpions. To say he knocked it out of the park would be an understatement. 

In fact, Mikkey was rocked like a hurricane (heyooo!) after meeting his new Indian Scout chopper in person. “Wow, how stylish is that!” Mikkey said after his first encounter with his new Scout chopper that Ronna built in his Swedish workshop. 

The inspiration for Ronna’s build comes from legendary custom bike builder and drag racer, Stan Dishong, a trailblazer in the NorCal custom bike scene with Stan’s Cycle in Vallejo, California. Stan made long Springer frontends, sissy bars, tall risers and handlebars and much more. In fact, one of Stan’s early customers was Arlen Ness. 

We think Stan would be proud of Ronna’s efforts with the new UCC Scout, which took a completely different approach than either Roland Sands Design’s Indian Scout racer (see that bike HERE) or even 20th Century Racing’s vintage-inspired take (see that bike HERE). Mix in chopper styling with a reshaped frame, plenty of rake and long frontend with a performance-packed, water-cooled 1250cc V-twin and you have one badass machine. 

It says a lot about a builder when a custom bike doesn’t look modified. In other words, if someone builds a custom motorcycle that looks like it came that way from the factory, well that’s a testament to that builder’s quality craftsmanship and attention to detail.

After Ronna Noren was invited by his friend, and head of design for Indian Motorcycle, Ola Stenegard, to take part in this year’s FORGED Series, we knew he was going to bring something special. 

“When you sweep your eyes over the bike, nothing really jumps out at you in a bad way,” Ola says. “It’s just totally consistent and sits really well and that to me is what sums up this bike. It’s the stance, it sits right, it’s totally clean, and that’s what makes it so special.” 

Ronna’s built several custom bikes over his 40-year tenure as a premiere custom shop in Sweden. He’s kind of known as a fabrication genius. After seeing where he took the stock Scout in this year’s FORGED series, we understand why. The lines flow perfectly. Look at how well the rear shock blends into the frame that now swoops seamlessly up to the neck. The way he reshaped and redesigned the radiator shroud into the new downtube is also seamless. It’s like it came that way from the factory, which is the approach all the greats set out to achieve. 

“The plan from the beginning was to strip down the bike and make it as clean as possible,” Ronna says. “I started with stretching the frame and making a smaller gas tank and bigger wheel. It feels lighter and works on the triple trees to get the trail right to handle really good. Of course it has a little bit longer fork like Stan’s bike and this is a twist on that.” 

Ronna also took the factory gas tank and reshaped it, making it a tad smaller to fit the new chassis all together. “I took the stock tank and cut it down so it fits the chopper better,” Ronna says. 

Roland Sands was this year’s host of the FORGED program and was on-hand at the custom reveals for each bike’s intended recipient. Roland and Ola hit the road to Prague to see Ronna’s creation and watch Mikkey’s jaw drop when he first encountered the performance chopper. When Roland got to Prague and saw what Ronna had built, he was impressed. “Simplicity is complicated,” Roland says. “It absolutely is when it comes to building simple-looking bikes. I mean the tank is simple, the paint is simple, but this is a water-cooled American twin by Indian Motorcycle in a beautiful chopper chassis. That’s a lot of goodness all smashed into one package.” 

After the gents took a look at the bike, all that was left to do was go for a ride. Ronna, Roland, Ola and Mikkey suited up and hit the road for a very cool customer shakedown ride. 

“Riding it all day was another experience,” Mikkey says. “It’s really light handling and has a great balance. I really enjoyed that!” 

Another first, in all of Ronna’s 40 years of building bikes, was that Ronna took a ride with one of his customers. “Normally I never ride with the customer,” Ronna says. “That was the first day I rode with the customer, and to see how much he liked the bike for me was special.” 

The 2025 Indian Scout was designed with customization in mind, and the all-new cruiser is a bike born from icons and ridden by legends. Each build in this sophomore effort of the Forged Series is rooted in a historical figure, machine, or era of inspiration taken from Scout’s 100-plus-year history–highlighting icons of the past, through the eyes of today’s legends.

“Every year when we do the FORGED Program, we’re trying to pick the right builders that can really show the diversity of the platform,” Ola says. “All the builders took it in so many different directions and really showed what this platform can do. All the way from West Coast performance to old-school girder to East Coast bar hopper-bruiser, it really showed that the platform can do it all, which is really awesome.” 

Special Components:

Frame:

• 33-degree on the neck, 37 degrees on the fork
• 4″ stretch 
• One-off custom narrowed upper frame built around a Trask Powerflow air filter
• Swingarm–Shock mounts moved back

Fork:

• 8″ over Tolle Engineering fork legs and hydraulics
• One-off billet triple trees with 4 degrees of rake

Shocks:

• IMC/Fox with black anodized aluminum body

Wheels:

• Front: 80/90-21″ Cerakoted hub and rim with stainless spokes
• Rear: 180/55-18″ Cerakoted hub and 5.5″ rim with stainless spokes

Brakes:

• Front: ISR 6-piston, one-piece, radial caliper and ISR prototype billet adapter kit for Scout, 320mm full floating disc, ISR master cylinder
• Rear: ISR 4-piston, one-piece, radial caloi[per and ISR prototype billet adapter kit  for Scout, IMC master cylinder

Bodywork:

• Tank: shortened, narrowed and sectioned stock scout with custom tunnel and repositioned fuel pump, Tolle Engineering Pop-up fuel cap
• Rear fender: custom modified
• Front fender: one-off modified
• Seat: one-off steel seat base, Silver Machine upholstery

Misc: 

• handlebars: heavily modified stock bars with integrated risers and one off speedo housing
• full custom one-off headers and mufflers in stainless steel
• modified Scout pegs and controls
• custom paint and gloss black frame/swingarm by Hakan Lindberg

For more information, visit IndianMotorcycle.com and follow along on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.