in 10 years you have seen his face on Indian Motorcycle posters and advertisements. But Alec Ferguson isn’t just the pretty face you see on most posters at an Indian dealership; he is a racer and racer like us who happen to be living the dream of a cyclist getting paid to ride.
Since 2013, you’ve seen Ferguson’s face often obscured by a helmet on motorcycle ads in India. Sometimes he’s on a Reconnaissance or a Challenger, sometimes he is at a cafe with his friends, or sometimes he is resting near a viewpoint. But in any case, he was wearing an Indian coat and an Indian motorcycle was nearby.
But Ferguson is more than just a pretty face.
“I wanted to be a road racer, to do Daytona,” Ferguson said. “I worked for a Honda dealership, and my manager raced locally, and he gave me the opportunity. That’s where I met a guy named Ben Spies (AMA Superbike Champion). I had a pit pass. We were the same age and he said, ‘I have to go do sesh and keep talking to you.’”
Although the two didn’t connect at the track, they did connect later that evening at a sushi restaurant, where they talked about racing. The spies helped Ferguson connect with other drivers and teams. Those early conversations led to Ferguson moving to Houston, and then Austin, Texas, where he was shot, but not as a driver. “I’m a mechanic on the AMA and they’ll give me a ride and I’ll have follow-up days. I slept more in the back of the trucks to live the racers’ dream.”
Finally, he was able to start racing: “I am completely independent, racing for Roadracer Supply on a Ninja 636.”
But, like many racing careers, Ferguson was unable to continue earning sponsorships and the grueling week-to-day schedule took its toll. “We ran out of resources,” he said. For example, Ferguson said he drove at 70 mph behind photo trucks and had to handle unfamiliar $30,000 high-displacement vehicles like a truck driver. New challenge safely around unfamiliar roads.
But Freguson never thought of herself as a model. A stint in the United States Air Force brought him to Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. After leaving the army, he started doing what he knew: repairing motorbikes.
Then, one day, the store received an email asking for actors that a company was looking for models to also ride. “I thought, what the hell is this?” Ferguson said. “I showed up, and there were beauties everywhere, and I was still wearing an oiled Dickies shirt.”
When the casting call went on, they had him try on the jacket, pose, and before he could say Yoshimura, he was cast. “This is my 10 pointsorder year. That’s how it started,” he said. His first shot was in a brand new Chief near a rural airport.
He said the heaviness of the work didn’t start until he was at the airport and saw himself riding an Indian on the cover of “Popular Mechanics” magazine. “That’s when everything changed,” he said. Since then, he’s worked on campaigns for Red Wing Shoes and even Coors Light.
However, he couldn’t resist going into a dealership in India to see a poster with his face on it. Sometimes the dealer will recognize him, sometimes not.
“I always get people asking ‘Is this you?’ and it’s a billboard in Korea or Mexico,” he said.
Ferguson, whose family is from Jamaica, is one of the few African-Americans in the industry.
“I would like to welcome the Indians. I don’t want to speak for the Indians, but they want to show the best. The Indians did a great job of diversifying,” Ferguson said. “Once I was in a dealership, and a guy came up to me and said, ‘You’ve been my wallpaper for the past six years (on my computer). When I see you, I see myself.’ That was amazing.”
“As a kid, I never thought I would inspire people. I’m a road racer, a mountain biker and I never thought I could influence so many people,” Ferguson said. “When I was a kid, Eddie Lawson was my hero. Now, people can look at me and say, ‘I can do it.’”
