Car-N-Style-Jan-2013..

Snapshot ReviewNot everyone is qualified to ride an Enfield motorcycle. A few decades back, when boys were scurrying to buy motorcycles as light as abicycle, the Enfield company separated the men from the boys. (The company was then owned by Madras Motors until Eicher took overthe company in the 1990s.) The men went ahead and bought the Enfield Bullet motorcycles. The boys went ahead and continued sippingCampa Cola (Coke had been banned in India at that time). I am talking about the early 1980s. I was then in my second year of college.The present MD and CEO of Eicher (Royal Enfield is part of the Eicher group) Siddhartha Lal would then have been around 10 years old.The Bullet was then a mean machine.Everything about the bike was different. The gearshift lever and the kick lever were on the right. There was an additional tiny lever thatgot the gear into the neutral position the moment you tapped it with your foot. On the left side was the brake pedal. Those were the daysof the carburetor and fuel injection was an unheard of technology. There was no electric start too.The best part was the kick. It was a brute of a mechanism. It used to ‘kick’ you back! Yes, two out of five times when you attempted tokick start the Bullet motorcycle, it used to spring back, almost ripping your legs away. Those who survived the Enfield Bullet became realmen. The rest were cast away into a playschool with 100cc bikes and tamed scooters to ride.Today Royal Enfield bikes come in three categories: Thunderbird, Bullet and Classic. The Thunderbird comes in a 500cc and 350ccversions. The Thunderbird has been around for almost a decade now. It’s now that the technology in it has just got better.www.carnstyle.comJanuary 2013 / Car N Style / 29