Riding on its retro-cool image, Royal Enfield has gained international presence. Here’s a look at why the bike holds an iconic place among Indian bikers.

My earliest memories were formed in Chandigarh. Expansive parks, localities numbered as sectors, and milkmen moving around on bulky, noisy Enfield motorcycles called ‘ Bullt’. To my young mind, Enfield India Ltd.’s signature model Bullet was the flatulent-sounding carriage of portly milkmen.

My first motorcycle was a Yamaha — sleek, zippy, urbane. After about two years, I tried out a friend’s Enfield. The bulk that had annoyed me earlier now felt like stability, securing me to the road. The engine’s thump created a sonic blanket that kept the world at a distance. The gear lever was under the right foot, unlike all other motorcycles; it required an elevated consciousness to avoid braking when one intended to change the gear.

It was love at first ride. In a matter of weeks, I’d sold my Yamaha and got myself a Bullet. But the company was running losses. Eicher Motors Ltd, which owned Enfield, had decided to sell it off. This is when the scion of the Eicher family, Siddhartha Lal, timidly asked the board to let him have a crack at the company. More than a decade later, the company — renamed Royal Enfield (RE) after the Indian company acquired the British marquee — is a corporate fable. Lal’s audacity and success is the stuff of lifestyle columns in business papers.

Over the past four years or so, each month brings new sales records for RE (see table). So much so that RE is monsoon-proof. (Motorcycle sales dipped 8.2 per cent for the fifth consecutive month in February this year, which is put down to a crunch in rural incomes after the 2014 monsoon disappointed.) RE’s buyers are people who don’t care for the mileage-obsessed Indian market, where the most common question on the street is: “ Kitna deti hai? (What’s the mileage?)”

Therein lies the key to RE’s success. Lal has iterated and reiterated his lack of interest in the commuter motorcycle market that is obsessed with the bottomline. He sought to capitalise Enfield’s brand value of leisure riding and cool, right through the history of post-independence India. Which calls for a quick history lesson.

Several European cycle makers, around the turn of the 19 century, had begun to install motors in their products to take the pedalling out of cycling. Motorcycle manufacturing got a boost from the two great wars, especially as a quick mode of communication from the frontline. Leisure riding emerged as a sub-culture only after WW II; soldiers who had ridden motorcycles during the war had spare income and time during the post-war boom to indulge in youthful pursuits and adventure. (Which also created the rock rebellion. Motorcycles figure prominently in the lives of rock music legends of that era.)

In India of the early 1950s, skirmishes with Pakistan prompted the army to order 800-odd motorcycles from Royal Enfield, a company that had impressed with its machines in the war effort in England. Given the restrictions on import in those days of scarcity, Madras Motors Ltd. started assembling complete knock-down (CND) kits of RE. Gradually, motorcycle production was started in the company. Meanwhile, European motorcycle makers were rapidly losing business to Japanese competitors in the 1960s. RE’s factory in Redditch shut down in 1969.

RE’s Bullet model continued to be manufactured in India, much like it had been originally designed in 1948 by the company’s chief draughtsman Ted Pardoe. The armed forces swore by it. What soldiers do on their job often becomes cool for civilians. Enfield became the only motorcycle for those who were looking for something more than convenience in mobility: adventure. The Bullet became a signature of the outliers. And so it remained well into the 1980s, when the Japanese automobile invasion finally reached India. (Check out the Yeh Bullet Meri Jaan advert on YouTube.)

The Eicher group had bought Madras Motors in 1989. In about a decade, the losses were becoming unbearable. Something, however, had changed in India. Economic liberalisation had arrived in 1991. At least one section of India was becoming prosperous. The social and economic conditions bore some resemblance to post-war Europe. The young Siddhartha Lal had a sense of that when he spoke up at that board meeting and asked for the company.

The turnaround was not easy. Several models and engine variations were tried and discarded, first by the market and then by the company itself. It is only with the retro-styled Classic that RE hit upon a clear winner. Old-timers complain that the new aluminium engines don’t have the thump and character of the old, cast-iron engines. But as a company, RE has transitioned. From an anachronistic design with the gear lever on the wrong side, its new models have contemporary features that are designed to look classic.

This is not an easy marriage. For RE’s motorcycles fall between the stools. Its engines are not as frugal and efficient as a string of Japanese designs; they also do not deliver the power and performance that can command the high-end motorcycle buyer who has his eyes set on the best of international brands like Harley-Davidson. Perhaps in any other country, RE might not have been such a success. But this is India; between-the-stools is our backyard. RE’s motorcycles are as favoured by software techies looking for a break from the rigmarole as by wrench-in-hand machinists on the lookout for a motorcycle to customise, to make it their own.

Riding on the retro-cool image, the milkman’s motorcycle is gaining an international presence, with exports increasing steadily (see table). I have owned and ridden several motorcycles since my childhood in Chandigarh. But comfort lies only in the thump of a Royal Enfield that drowns all noise of mileage and RPM stats. This is a zone along the margins. It is owned by a company that carves its own path and is not affected too much by the ups and downs of everyday life.