The old saying that the journey is everything applies just as much to the top speed as it does to the destination, perhaps more so.
The Royal Enfield's lazy revving single cylinder engine has the torque to grunt its way forward from standstill in any gear. The higher the gear you pull away in, the more patience you need, but thats all.
It has not lost the motorcycle’s original relationship to the bicycle.
It is still a bicycle with a 500cc single cylinder engine, complemented by huge mud guards, spoked wheels, skinny tyres, single exhaust pipe, single seat and the trademark headlamp unit with a nacelle, or cover housing, around it.
The nacelle around the headlamp is unchanged from this bike’s antecedents of 60 years ago and more. When I last saw an old Royal Enfield in a museum I was amazed to see just how the original nacelle design has been left unchanged, with the two pilot-lights (known as tiger’s eyes in India) either side of the main headlamp, the speedometer, warning lights and ignition key all in the same position.
Side-on you behold the idiosyncratic shape of the Royal Enfield engine with the large, bulbous air-cooled cylinder head, and the three different visual levels of the seat, the tank and the headlight, each higher than the other as if sculptured to please the eye. In today’s parlance, the machine is extremely naked, with no design abstraction between you and the machine; there's no attempt to hide the truth of its simplicity. This first sight of unashamed nakedness is but a foretaste of the no filter motorcycling experience to come.
No filter that is apart from, say, one, which is the starter motor, which starts the engine easily with a few turns. Kick it into life if you will, the kick-starter is there, and the result is the same, as the plant pot-sized piston lazily reciprocates up and down, shaking the mirrors, numberplate, indicators and the rest of it as it emits the trademark phump, phump, phump from the huge exhaust silencer.
Hit a pothole don't worry; the Indian army choose this bike for a reason. This is a machine for the dirt roads of Rajasthan, Himalayan passes, floods and fords of Kerala and patrolling Kashmiri mountain terrorist lairs. This is truly built like a gun. You will have to search hard to find plastic. The fact that this heavy and solid motorcycle was originally designed for the pre-motorway roads and country lanes of England is testament to the Royal Enfield’s rugged versatility.
This is not a run-of-the-mill modern motorcycle. If you want acceleration and eye-watering top speed, forget it. The old saying that the journey is everything applies just as much to the top speed, that is the latter is not everything.
My point is made by the impact of its appearance when parked up with other ‘normal’ motorcycles that have lost their original relationship to the bicycle. The key aspect of the Royal Enfield stands out in all its visible, audible and tangible solidity… its soul.
© John Dunn.