What do Scorpions’ drummer Mikkey Dee, 1950’s bike builder Stan Dishong and Indian Motorcycle have in common? Ronna Noren’s impeccable 2025 custom Indian Scout.
When Indian decided to go international with the Forged series, they chose to walk the journey on the shoulders of giants, those being none other than Indian chief of design Ola Stenegärd, drummer icon Mikkey Dee and – running the whole show – Swedish chopper builder Ronna Norén from Unique Custom Cycles.
Ronna, the third builder on this year’s Forged line up, started building motorcycles at the age of 14, and in Roland Sans’ words “he is a true bike builder in its truest form”. Upon joining Plebs Choppers in 1994, Ola and the Scandinavian scene saw Unique Custom Cycles being born in the club workshop where Ronna would work at, who at the time was already taking home multiple awards for his machines. 40 years of dedication later, UCC keeps delivering pristine work like the one on display here.
For this occasion nothing was left untouched, and the Scout platform pushed – or dare I say, stretched – quite a bit. Ronna took inspiration from Stan Dishong, a Californian builder who surfed the custom wave back in the 50’s and built an original Scout, a 1937 drag bike with custom stretched forks and narrowed tank. So for the Forged build, Ronna started cutting up the frame neck, stretched the downtubes and redesigned the whole upper frame to set the proper stance. He also integrated the radiator in between the downtubes, perfectly tucked into the chassis.
The original tank was cut in 4 parts, sectioned and the fuel pump relocated to get the whole thing nicely narrow, which gives the bike a very compact appearance, as do the clean stainless 2-2 exhaust pipes. A custom rear fender closes the line on the rear, and rest is such clean work one wonders where the line between factory and custom work lies. 18” rear and 21” front spoke wheels set the classic look, 8” over Tolle forks hint at the Swedish nature of this cycle and front and rear ISR disc brakes make sure no rockstar will be lost to the roads.
While there is no shortage of details, it’s the whole package that works so well on this machine. It’s as clean as a modern American water cooled V-Twin can get, with a sensible amount of chopping that only a master like Ronna can execute to this level, where it looks both noticeably unique and as if it just rolled out of the factory.
With this collaboration – and many others we’ve seen, and hopefully are to come – Indian is proving the versatility of the new Scout and growing a symbiotic relationship between industry and custom culture, which is delivering exquisite works worldwide and we hope will last for years to come.
