CarBrandLogos archive · Royal Enfield · 1932
In continuous production since 1932, and made in India longer than it was in England.
Discover the storyPhoto: Samihasib · CC BY-SA 3.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Royal Enfield Bullet, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
The name first appeared in Redditch in 1932, on a sporting overhead-valve single with an inclined engine. What made it endure was the post-war version of 1949, which introduced swinging-arm rear suspension with oil damping at a time when most British motorcycles still had rigid or plunger frames, and which gave the Bullet a reputation for handling rough surfaces well.
Bullet 350 Twinspark · Vaikoovery · CC BY 3.0
02
That reputation is why the story moved to India. The Indian Army wanted a machine for border patrol, ordered 350cc Bullets in the mid-1950s, and arranged for assembly near Madras through Madras Motors. Enfield India began building complete motorcycles under licence, and continued making a design that changed very little while the British industry around its parent collapsed. Royal Enfield's Redditch operations ended around 1970; the Indian factory carried on without pause, which is how a model launched before the Second World War is still being made.
Enfield Bullet 350, Kathgodam, India · Yann (talk) · CC BY-SA 4.0
03
For decades the Indian Bullet was an anachronism sold as a virtue: a cast-iron 350 or 500cc single, a right-foot gearchange with a neutral finder, a four-speed Albion gearbox, and an exhaust beat that Indian riders describe with a word for the thump. It was slow, it leaked, and it was the motorcycle of the Indian officer class and, later, of anyone who wanted something with presence. Riders learned the gearbox as a skill in itself, since the right-foot change with its neutral finder lever ran opposite to every other machine on the road, and the ritual of setting the timing and kicking the engine over against compression was part of the ownership rather than a fault in it.
Royal Enfield Electra - 04 · Doomguy10011 · CC BY-SA 4.0
04
Modernisation then came carefully, and slowly enough that the character survived it. Fuel injection replaced the carburettor, a five-speed left-shift gearbox arrived to make the bike usable for riders raised on Japanese machinery, and from 2008 the unit construction engine finally combined engine and gearbox in one casing, which dealt with most of the oil leaks and much of the unreliability without altering the shape or the beat. Exports to Europe and North America grew steadily through the 2000s, and the Bullet became a cheap entry point to a kind of motorcycling, all torque and no urgency, that had otherwise disappeared from showrooms.
05
Royal Enfield is now among the largest makers of mid-capacity motorcycles in the world, and its parallel twins, scramblers and adventure bikes have carried the company well beyond a single model. The Bullet is nonetheless the reason there was a company to expand: it kept the factory running through decades when nothing else the firm made mattered, and it holds the longest continuous production run of any motorcycle ever built.
At a glance
Produced
1931–presentTechnical specification
From the journal
Contemporaries from the 1930s
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