The tenth International Auto Expo in Delhi opened gates for the cars and the bikes lovers to barge in and catch a glimpse at their favourite vehicles. The expo unveiled some superb machines that left the spectators gasping to say the least. The eye-catching revelation in the bikes section was of course from the Royal Enfield stable with a Café racer variant which at the very first glance gives us an impression of a pure performer.
The Enfield Café racer is designed to cater to the International market, and according to the Royal Enfield CEO of Royal Enfield R L Ravichandran the Café Racer will officially be launched in the year 2012. Indian consumers will get their hands on the racer a little later, probably in the following year.
The bike will mostly be powered by a UCE 500cc engine. The first thing that strikes the on-lookers about the new Enfield Café racer is the bump stop seat, which looks cool as well as sporty.
The bike seems to have gotten inspiration from Royal Enfield Classic, however, its features such as foot pegs at the rear and controls, chopped mudguard, and the ‘bum-stop’ seat are quite appealing. Then of course, are the huge racing number plates on the sides which are pretty bold. The bike features other attractions such as the clip-on bars, chopped mudguards, twin pod instrument cluster, megaphone muffler and the retro tail lamp cluster. There are rumors that the standard Classic 500 engine could get some tweaking so the displacement would be increased and the valve gear also might receive some tweaking.
The first impression of the bike definitely suggests that it is designed to be a hardcore performance bike. And as regards the price the new Royal Enfield Café racer is estimated to be something around Rs. 1,70,000.
Eicher Motors (Royal Enfield is part of Eicher Motors) MD and CEO Siddhartha Lal said at the Auto Expo, “the year 2010 is an absolute crucial year for us as we are going to have a full switch over to a new engine platform from a 50-year-old one.” He further added, “We are producing 20 per cent of our total output from the new platform but from April it will be 100 per cent. All work and the investment have been already done.”
Eicher Motors is putting in an investment of Rs. 80 – 100 crores in the coming two years so the manufacturing capacity is doubled to 1 lakh units from its plant at Chennai. In 2009 the company sold 52,000 RE units which is a good increase as compared to2008 (43,000 units) and is now forecasting a figure of 60,000 units by the end of year 2010. After the launch of Café Racer the company can raise bars and look up at bigger targets.
