Indian motorcycle brand Royal Enfield went from selling 45,000 units in 2007 to nearly 1 million in 2024! How did this formerly British motorcycle company get to India in the first place, and how did it go from quirky vintage motorcycles to a global middleweight motorcycle phenomenon? Join Kevin Cameron and Mark Hoyer as they discuss the strategic growth of the brand and the person behind it all.
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SportsTranscript
00:00We're back with the Cyborg World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, the Editor-in-Chief,
00:03and I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor, as ever, as usual.
00:07And our topic this week is how Royal Enfield is taking over the world, because they are.
00:13It's been a miraculous transformation of a brand that was almost out of business,
00:19and now it's closing in on...
00:22And which traveled halfway around the earth.
00:24Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's closing in on a million units a year.
00:30Globally, which is crazy.
00:37The first thing I wrote and wrote about, essentially, for the magazine was a Royal Enfield
00:44Bullet 500 in 1999. I went in my first editorial meeting with all these experienced Cyborg World
00:53editors, and I walked in, and they said, hey, we're going to have you test this Royal Enfield,
01:04and it's not a regular motorcycle. You could really flame this thing to the ground.
01:11It's not a Honda. You got to kind of take it for what it is.
01:14It's essentially, at the time, it was essentially a 1955 Royal Enfield. Royal Enfield, 1901,
01:21England, built like a gun, all that stuff. They were an arms manufacturer, and
01:30they were having financial problems, and they had taken the Enfield to India,
01:37and were manufacturing it in India. They were using it for the military,
01:42and they essentially, even when Enfield itself, the British version of Enfield went out of business,
01:48Enfield in India, Enfield India continued, and continued making these bikes, and they
01:55wove themselves into, they were fixable. They made the Beat, which was very important, the big 500
02:01single, 350 single, boop, boop, boop, but by 1999, it was essentially the same motorcycle. I mean,
02:08it had some carburation updates and a few things, but it vibrated. My bike vibrated so much, it made
02:14me itchy. It was very difficult to shift at times. It just was very, pretty rough and ready.
02:22The importer at the time was Kevin Mahoney. I think in 99, it was Kevin Mahoney, and he certainly was
02:30in 08 when we went to India, which I'll get to, but it vibrated. It was hard to start, and Kevin said,
02:37well, you know, they're bikes that require an explanation. You know, when you went to buy them,
02:45they were hand pinstriped, and there were flaws. You know, I mean, it wasn't mechanized,
02:52but that was the humanity of these bikes as well. So,
02:58teetering on the brink of destruction, and Siddhartha Lal,
03:02son of Vikram Lal, they acquired the company in 2000, 2001. He was 26 years old,
03:14and it was his project. He loved motor... That's one of the things about Siddhartha Lal is he loves
03:18motorcycling, and so you have an enthusiastic 26-year-old, and he wanted to, you know, change
03:25the world. Think of the energy. Yes, and he set to work. So, you know, I rode the bike, and it was
03:38charming, and it did require explanation, and there were, you know, it was something. But in 08,
03:45they came out with the unit construction engine, which was their first new engine. It was
03:50essentially their evolution. You know, the Harley-Davidson Evo came in the 80s and really
03:56changed course for Harley, modernized what they were doing, fixed, you know, fixed leaks and made
04:00them run better, and, you know, Evo was a real lifesaver for them, and that's what the UCE was.
04:05It was 500 and 350. It was fuel injected. It was mapped to at least 18,000, like 18,530 feet
04:13because of the Himalayas or Himalayas, as you wish, and it could run at 70 all day. It was,
04:24it was, by all accounts, a modern motorcycle, and at that time, I'll read the quote. I met Siddhartha
04:31Lal in Chennai where the factory is, and I saw two factories. In fact, I saw the old factory,
04:39which was dirty and dark, and they were bolting engine cases to fixtures and pulling great big
04:46levers with cutting fluid going over it, and just, it was really crazy, and then we went to
04:52the modern area where they were building the UCE, and they had, like, CNC sealant machines
05:00putting gray, perfect gray beads of sealant around the engine cases, and they were,
05:05assembly was brightly lighted, and there were all these new folks building motorcycles, so I
05:11sit down with Sid Lal and kind of closed my story on the UCE, of riding it in India and testing that
05:18new bike, and it's, he says, we have low-cost manufacturing. We have a heritage you cannot buy
05:24off the shelf. We have a name you cannot buy off the shelf. Our cash reserves are good. The classic
05:29is just our first product designed for international markets. Over the next 15 to 20 years,
05:35you'll see more specific bikes for the U.S. and Europe and other bikes for India,
05:41and here we are. That was 2008. We're nearly 20 years. We're 15, 17 years on, and at the time,
05:50in the story, 07, I think, was 45,000 units. I think around 1999, it might have been 25,000 units,
06:00and last year, it was 944,000 units, and we have the INT. We have the 650 platform.
06:12We have the Himalayan of originally 411 and now 450-ish,
06:19and all the variety of bikes. They make the 350 single,
06:23and they really focused on the fun. It is a culture and a soul the way Harley-Davidson is.
06:39It's just the Indian version of it. Yes, because it is all India, this motorcycle. When
06:47the India side was selling motorcycles, they decided to get into manufacturing them,
06:58and they assembled from parts sent from England, and then using production machines bought from
07:06the English company, they began to make many of their own components, and presently,
07:12they were able to build the motorcycle 100% in India, and that's the way it has been ever since.
07:23Now, when you look at the specs, at first, they're unimpressive,
07:33but this is a motorcycle that allows you to choose the role. It's not going to impose a role on you,
07:45for example, by making 200 horsepower. It is a useful, reliable motorcycle, and
07:55when I look back on the history of the American market, I see that the leading edge of the
08:03Japanese import scheme was 50cc step-throughs, then 100s, 125s, 250s. As the sales have moved
08:18to the head of the line, the larger displacements, the smaller displacements have been abandoned,
08:26and so many people who learned to ride motorcycles in that time said,
08:31I had so much fun on those little bikes. I had no idea motorcycling was like that,
08:37because you socially were strongly inhibited from going near motorcycles because,
08:44as the late Phil Schilling once put it, people feared that they would give you tattoos,
08:52and I think that the spirit of Royal Enfield's exports is, this is a motorcycle. Make of it
09:03what you will, and we know that those 50cc step-throughs were made to carry the whole family
09:12plus a goat, and you'll find that in Southeast Asia. Yes, a working motorcycle. Working motorcycles
09:22in India. The Indian market is variously between 15 and 20 million units a year.
09:29Most of those are in the 150 range, and it's Bajaj and TBS, the partner bikes, Hero Honda,
09:36et cetera, and they're sort of $1,200 to $1,500 brand new, and they're bought with loans. That was
09:45the discussion I had in 08 with talking about the Indian market, and we saw families of five
09:53carrying a 10-pound bag of rice in addition to the whole family, like little kids,
10:00little babies. It was epic. It was beautiful, like rebar and furniture. It was so resourceful.
10:08It just makes you feel ridiculous over here because you need an 8,000-pound pickup truck
10:16to pick up four sticks of lumber like I do at the hardware store or whatever, but yeah,
10:23an amazing market, and motorcycling is fundamental transportation in the Indian market.
10:28Enfield was an aspirational brand. It had been around so long, it was sort of woven into the
10:35psyche, and it was bigger. It was 350s and 500s, and so that was kind of getting up market.
10:41It was sort of the luxury bike for India. Also, bear in mind that motorcycle registrations out
10:49number car registrations in India very considerably, so the motorcycle is still
10:59a useful working vehicle as well as being
11:06leisure entertainment. This is really its role in Asia is, for now, is
11:16as a practical vehicle, but the Royal Enfield, being as aspirational as it is, is bigger,
11:24and then they had the idea, what if we export these? What if the traditional name,
11:34Royal Enfield from 1901, and the 1950s styling, because that's frankly where it starts,
11:45would strike a chord with people who, like myself, ask the question,
11:52where did regular motorcycles go? Now, I don't mean to say that present-day
11:59mass-market motorcycles and top-end motorcycles aren't wonderful. They are wonderful,
12:04but there's a market niche here, and Royal Enfield intend to occupy it.
12:12Well, their emphasis is middleweight bikes, and so they're not going over, say, 900 cc, so
12:19they're looking at that, and they're looking at emerging middle class in big markets like India,
12:27Brazil. They're in Thailand. They're looking at places where people are
12:34experiencing the ability to take the next step. Coming up. Yep, and when you have a
12:39population the size of India, think of the number of people who would be entering the middle class,
12:47the possibility of the marketplace, what they call TAM, Total Addressable Market. Pretty darn big.
12:53If you're selling 20 million motorcycles in a market, think of how many of those you might
12:58wish to have be your own. This is really, when I look back, I look back and I think,
13:07when I look back, I look back at interviewing Siddhartha Lal in Chennai at the factory,
13:14and what he said during our interview, and he really set course at that time. It's really down
13:20to his leadership, and I think it's so essential that he loves motorcycles. I think many companies
13:27lose their way when you get somebody in who's a washing machine executive or whatever,
13:33where it's different. It's not an emotional thing. You have to keep the essential
13:39personality and soul of the product and enhance the relationship, even as you modernize and
13:48reliabilitize. You've got to really keep the relationship going with the customer,
13:57and they've done an exceptional job of that at Enfield. Recently, a year and a half, two years
14:05ago, Meteor 650, which was their cruiser, bobberish one, we went to Rajasthan in India,
14:13Jaisalmer, and we rode around the desert. We met the director of design and all these other guys.
14:27Everyone said it really came down to Siddhartha Lal's leadership. He's a very cruisy person,
14:36kind of laid back and cool. He's good on stage, and he's genuine. He's a genuine human being,
14:46and certainly, he plays the executive role, but they all said it's him. He
14:51sends the culture through the company. It's just been, we're going to do these things.
15:00They came out with the UCE, and they made a positive impression. They've built on that ever
15:04since. They built a tech center in England. They have a tech center in India, and they have a
15:12global design force. They shopped for leadership and production and design crews and product
15:24planners. Not coincidentally, were they located in England, not so far from Triumph.
15:32One of the guys I know at Triumph, he was in charge of the Daytona 675 engine,
15:43and then got product. Simon Warburton was at Triumph, and he was great to work with,
15:51super sharp guy. He's a big wheel in the British presence in the tech center.
16:02So it's been a massive transformation, and it's the leadership of Siddhartha Lal and his passion
16:09for riding that infuses the company. Now, here's an important point to make,
16:14and that is that although the original Bullitt 350 is a very dated looking motorcycle, and this
16:24is no longer produced, by the way, the present motorcycle is related to it in its appearance,
16:31but what has happened is that at each model change, the insides of the engines have been
16:38advanced into the present day. For example, the addition of a balancer allowed a 5,100 rpm
16:49peak engine to jump another 1,000 rpm without being uncomfortable. The balancer
16:59makes that possible. You will find that wherever possible, for example,
17:11the 450 engine is liquid cooled, and it is not just liquid cooled in the old sense, which is
17:21a cylinder sitting in a pot of water. The cutaway shows you that the coolant passages
17:28are very thin, which means that the velocity of the cooling water being pushed through there by
17:34the water pump is high. High water velocity is essential to good cooling because otherwise
17:43water in a stagnant area can over-temperature and boil, and steam doesn't conduct heat very well
17:52in comparison with solid water. These are evolving into thoroughly modern engines
18:04with all the modern features such as mapped fueling and ignition, liquid cooling, balance shafts,
18:12and in the twins... Well, liquid cooling is pretty new for Royal Enfield.
18:20Yes, it is. They have the Himalayan and then the rest is... Well, the Himalayan has a special
18:26problem. If you're actually going to run your bike at high altitude, you want to run the highest
18:31possible compression ratio unless you're going to supercharge it. In general, air-cooled engines
18:41don't run very high compression because they can't deal with the intensity of heat flow.
18:48Himalayan has liquid cooling, and it is a thoroughly modern design. From the outside,
18:56you can see the linkage to the past because, as Mark just mentioned, Mr. Law wants to retain the
19:08link between the rider and the idea behind this motorcycle. There's another thing, though, that...
19:18All right, I want to interject. I'd like to interject and then tell us what's fascinating.
19:23I talked with a fellow named R. Anbuselvan, and he said we could... This is on the UCE engine
19:31when I went to India, the 500. We could have removed at least two and a half pounds from
19:37the cylinder head weight based on our structural and thermal analyses,
19:41but the extra material was retained for style.
19:46Because it had to have the right look. It had to look right. So tell us what's fascinating, Kevin.
19:52Well, everyone that reads the specs comes down to the bottom line of price, and it's remarkably low.
20:01And it's easy for people to imagine, oh, well, the labor is cheap. Well, the fact is that
20:14other companies have factories in India, and some of them are right up the road from the Chennai plant.
20:23So if Royal Enfield were paying remarkably low wages, those people could just walk up the road
20:33and knock on the door of these other companies and take a jump in pay. So that's not the answer.
20:40Chennai was described to me as the Detroit of India. So it's on the southeast coast. And
20:46when I was talking to Kevin Mahoney, who was importing at the time in 08 when I went over,
20:52he described it as the Detroit of India. He said, if you were looking to start your own kind of
20:57washing machine company in America and you wanted to build washing machines, you could find a
21:01factory in Chennai that could probably knock those out for you. So that's sort of what we're looking
21:06at, an industrial spot where they're doing lots of work. Now, it's usual for business school models
21:15for manufacturing vehicles to say the largest single item in cost is parts and materials.
21:26And the second item is labor. But labor is typically quite small, 20 to 30 percent, whereas
21:36parts are the biggie. So I think that if Royal Enfield are able to make this price,
21:46their price is as low as they are, which is between a half and three quarters of comparable
21:56vehicles. There has to be something interesting going on. And when I looked for videos,
22:04all of the videos were of assembly lines. All the parts had been made.
22:10And on the assembly line, they assemble them into a motorcycle. So I went back and I asked the
22:18machine to show me automatic transfer lines, CNC machines at Royal Enfield, die casting equipment
22:28in use at Royal Enfield, nothing. But in what Mr. Lal said in some of his quotes,
22:37gives an inkling. The frames are made by a tie firm, which operates an ancillary operation
22:51at Royal Enfield's plants. And I remember when I first went to look at automated radial tire
23:01production, the tire companies were very excited by the idea that they could send a knockdown,
23:10versatile tire production unit to an automobile or motorcycle factory. And they would make the tires
23:20as they were needed, which would mean no shipping, no inventory cost,
23:29all kinds of things like this that are simply wiped out.
23:34And so I think that there is a new sort of manufacturing that is on the horizon here,
23:42and it has to do with having the capability of doing the whole thing,
23:48not necessarily in your own plant, but in conjunction with satellite plants located
23:57very close to you. And I was delighted to find that it is a tie die casting company
24:06that makes the die casting molds, and then they set up a unit to make the castings.
24:15And this is a step beyond just in time, because with just in time,
24:21you're tapping your fingers on the desk and wondering if your heart rate is up,
24:27because the stuff isn't here yet. Well, okay, here comes the truck.
24:31Whew. But if it's all close to you, and it's under central control,
24:41you can eliminate a lot of costs. And I think this is something interesting.
24:45This is pioneering work. This is not some strange offshore company that makes quirky motorcycles.
24:55This is a very ambitious operation that has stated in so many words that they want
25:03to dominate the middleweight worldwide. Well, they are.
25:10It's interesting. So what you're saying about the supply chain and you say quirky motorcycles,
25:16they're no longer quirky. They're just regular old motorcycles. The dealers I've talked to in
25:20the United States are like, no, we have very few problems with them. People love them. Young
25:26people love them and old people love them. People who have come up through Goldwings and big touring
25:32bikes and all that, like take Peter Egan. Peter Egan's had a 411 Himalayan for years, and he just
25:39doesn't get tired of it. He just loves riding it. And it's the right size. It's lighter. It's simple.
25:45It has enough power. It's everything he kind of needs in a bike. And that's echoed over and over
25:52again. Just a simple, honest motorcycle of good quality and of a style that you want to look at
26:01for that type of person. An MT-07, Yamaha, modern, pointy styling, great running engine. Yep,
26:08there's plenty of market for that. But Enfield's doing something special here.
26:13When I went back in 08, they were struggling with quality, not just their own work in their own
26:20factory, but that of the supply chain. And when you saw, I went to an accessories shop that was
26:28backed up to the river that goes through Chennai, and they had open tanks of plating material boiling
26:35away. And in the right side of the shop, there was a guy. I mean, it was like 90 degrees, 90%
26:44humidity, as you may expect. And he was taking steel tubing, and he had little bucks and fixtures.
26:53And he would cut the tubing. He's working on the floor. He would cut the tubing, and he would put
26:56it into a fixture. And he would hammer the end flat, and the fixture would help make a little
27:02round bubble as the tubing went in. And then he would very quickly turn it on a grinding machine
27:08to make it round. And he made sari guards. Saris are the clothing, particularly female clothing.
27:15And sari guards go over the back so that the saris don't get caught in the wheel. So if you're riding
27:20your family around, it's a very common accessory. And handlebars and racks and things. And then they
27:28would go next door to plating. And the guy running the shop's like, come on in and have a look. And
27:32you walk in, and it's like open plating. It felt, you know, didn't feel great. The chrome, they had
27:37all the chrome, you know, pieces, the finished pieces hanging up. And at the time, it was pretty
27:43wavy, and you know, it wasn't, they were struggling with quality. Now in the 80s, Japanese manufacturers
27:50started going into India, and you had Japanese quality. Because you had, because of taxation
27:56and protecting the market, you had to have a partner manufacturer in India to do your Hondas.
28:03And so it was Hero Honda. And when Enfield was doing this, they went and got RL Ravichandran,
28:08who had been at TBS Suzuki. And Siddhartha Lal said, I worked on him for two years
28:14to get him to come over. And they established in-house design in 2006, specifically for the 2008
28:21UCE bike. And their head of quality assurance, Dr. K.P. Nair, a really interesting great guy,
28:30and very forthright. He said, you know, we are targeting Japanese quality. We're not there yet.
28:35This is as I'm about to get on the 500 single. We're not there yet, but we're 80 percent there,
28:42and we'll keep working. But one of the challenges that both he and Siddhartha Lal described was
28:47the supply chain in India. Because all of those suppliers were not up to standard. And we've had
28:56now all this time, and you have Enfield putting pressure on the suppliers to up their game.
29:03If you want this contract, you need to get here. And that's what Harley has done. I mean,
29:10one of Harley's great advantages is a really mature supply chain that can do finishes,
29:19colors, textures, machining operations, chroming, all that stuff, to where you get that liquid.
29:26You get liquid, beautiful liquid paint, super smooth badges. I mean, it is refined. And that's
29:33really one of Harley's great advantages. And now Enfield has, apparently, a supply chain that can
29:40give them all of those things at an incredibly low cost. These are just motorcycles now. It used to
29:48be motorcycles with an explanation, like, well, that's just how they are. And they're still,
29:52you know, hand-striping them. There's two brothers that were doing it in 08. Hand-striping
29:58consecutive shifts, six days a week, every Royal Enfield. I don't know if they're still
30:04doing that at 944,000 units, but I believe they are still doing it.
30:09That is a beautiful video, because the certainty of motion, the operator is rolling the tank
30:19and drawing the stripe, and it's just flawless looking. It's quite remarkable.
30:28But at the same time, another video shows clear coat going on top of the tanks, and it is right
30:37up to the minute painting robots from ABB, which is a huge outfit that does robotics. And the robot
30:48painters look like they're dancing. Well, when I went through the factory,
30:55the paint was a guy. They were coming in on hangers, and there was running water behind the
31:02parts. And he walked in with a gun and shot him by hand. And then it came around, and the brothers
31:10at the time were Kishore and Jayakumar. Consecutive shifts, each and every pinstripe in 08.
31:20Amazing. We had a picture of the factory, and we had Hindustan machine tools making the old stuff,
31:27and then the new stuff was on brightly lighted CNC lines. And then there were some gray-haired
31:35fellows working with 18-year-olds, is what it looked like, young kids. So there were people
31:40there training a new generation of factory worker to assemble the new bikes. And now it is robotic,
31:49and it's every bit of modern manufacturing that you would expect, especially at these volumes.
31:56Yeah. I mean, you said you wanted to delete the word craftsmanship from any OE. I'm sorry,
32:05folks. But there are some rare cases of craftsmanship in the sense that you can get
32:10custom paint schemes from Harley, and they're really low production, hand-done things where
32:16there is some of that. But yeah, when you're just knocking out motors, we're not...
32:20And in fact, we don't want it. We don't want engines that are finished by an elderly gentleman
32:27in wireframe spectacles with a leather apron, taking a file stroke, and then blowing the chips,
32:37reaching into his micrometer pocket, making a measurement, shaking his head, reaches for the
32:43file. That's craftsmanship. What we want is every part identical within a narrow range so that
32:55you can assemble all these parts together and have controlled clearances in bearings
33:01between pistons and cylinders. You don't want those parts to be crafted. Imagine someone
33:07crafting a billion switches onto a silicon chip. Crafting? Please.
33:18There is a way. There's plenty of work for craftsmen, but it isn't in modern mass production.
33:26It's in the beauty of that pinstriping. Now, I don't know, as Mark says, whether they continue.
33:33Each of those men doing 400,000 tanks a year could be busy.
33:38Oh, there have to be some still getting that treatment. It has to be. It has to be.
33:46Should have asked. Should have called Sid. You really want to be able to assemble your engine
33:52from perfect parts. You want your rings to seal. You want everything to be perfectly repeatable,
33:57perfect bore surface so that it just goes together and runs. We can't do any custom
34:04fitting. What it reminds me of is Gilroy Indian or CMC, American Indian motorcycles. At the time,
34:13it was like a Harley aftermarket thing where they were using 45 degree V-twin. They had bottle cap
34:19cylinder heads, they call them, or the bottle cap rocker covers. They had been assembling those
34:25motorcycles from aftermarket parts, not to a spec. They were calling Baker drivetrain. They
34:30were calling a frame builder like Palco or something. They were getting these bikes in
34:36not to a spec and they were finding that they couldn't put them together, like tolerance
34:40stacking or whatever those problems were. They had to basically design. They had to go and say,
34:46here's what we expect the engine to be. Here's what we think it should be. Then supply that to
34:51the supplier and say, this is the spec. You need to build your parts to this spec.
34:56I think they improved. Obviously, we're well beyond that with Polaris,
35:02owning an Indian and giving it the rebirth it truly deserved.
35:09That perfect spec, craftsmanship's great. If I'm going to rebuild my XS650 in my garage,
35:17I'll hand file those ring end gaps to make sure they're okay.
35:22Man, when we're making a million units a year, we got no time for that. We don't want that.
35:28It's not repeatable. The amount of time it takes to repeat something to the thousandth like that,
35:36I mean, honestly, how many could you possibly make with a bunch of people with micrometers
35:43standing around? Well, hundreds of years ago, there was an organ manufacturer, Arp Schnitger,
35:52operating in Europe, built over 500 units during his career. He independently
36:02invented interchangeable parts, because when he would get a message
36:07from a parish somewhere that had one of his organs saying, well, we're down and we need
36:14parts and this and that, it was traditional to send your craftsman to make the repair,
36:21which meant while they were away, you weren't building any organs. He made the reasonable
36:29leap to say, what if all the parts are made the same so that you don't have to be a craftsman
36:39or a foreman fitter to install them? Then their organ is back online and our factory is producing
36:48organs, not at one or the other. So there are a lot of ways to look at craftsmanship. Of course,
36:56it's valuable for all kinds of things and we have to respect it because it's based on experience
37:02and thought. But in order to have all these motorbikes at these attractive prices,
37:11we have to do something more quickly in every tiny detail so that, as Mark says,
37:20take a batch of parts, put them together. It is a motorcycle. Starts, runs, is good.
37:27Is good.
37:37I'm also pleased because I'm pleased at the thought that there is another way
37:42to reduce costs than to underpay people.
37:48Because when Japanese motorcycles were first coming into the U.S.,
37:53they were dismissed by real motorcyclists as saying, oh, we all had those Japanese
38:00pressed tin toys when we were kids and the motorcycles are no different.
38:06But I knew otherwise because I had- They were different.
38:09I was working with them every day. They were different.
38:15And soon it became possible because of mass production to buy a motorcycle with advanced
38:21features such as overhead camshafts, multi-cylinders, electric start at kickstart prices.
38:34That's an achievement. It is. It takes a commitment too. It takes a
38:38vision and commitment to make that leap. Because if, like the British, you're comfortably making
38:43the same bike that you were making 15 years ago, roughly, or even 30 years ago,
38:49and you're just, oh yeah, no. And you're using the same machine tools like the famous,
38:53I think, Norton story, like they move- Where's my stick?
38:57Where's my stick? And the guy who had been doing the machining, I don't remember if he didn't move
39:04with the factory, but somebody else took over and they were getting chatter on some machining
39:08operation. And they called the guy who had previously been running the machine. And he said,
39:13boy, where's my stick? And the stick was a big wooden log that you grab. And he would put it down
39:20on the rotating part. The spindle. On the spindle. So it wouldn't chatter.
39:25It took the clearance out. It crowded it over to one side of the clearance. Yeah.
39:29Can't. That doesn't work today. No.
39:34So you're comfortable making that old bike. The commitment is, we're going to die cast
39:40these cylinders because we're going to make a zillion of them. We're just going to say,
39:43we're going to sell them. And we're going to die cast this stuff. And we're going to put
39:46electric motors on for starting. And we're putting the overhead cam in. And Honda did
39:50it with the CB750. Bang. There it was. Inline four-cylinder overhead cam electric start.
39:55Four carburetors. Quad pipes out the back. Shiny chrome. Nice looking paint.
40:02The early ones were sandcast. Those are the ones that cost a lot now. But hey, just if you want to
40:07ride around, don't worry about the sandcast. Just get one of those die cast ones. It takes
40:12a commitment and vision. And I think, you know, that's Siddhartha Wall had that commitment and
40:17vision. I mean, when you, you know, look at 25,000 units to where we are now.
40:23The U.S. went through a similar process. Before World War I, manufacturers of premium automobiles
40:32knew that ordinary steel did not make a very good crankshaft. So they ordered their steel from
40:39France or Germany because it wasn't available in the U.S. The U.S. steel industry was proud of its
40:45volume, which was essential to making rails and bridges and steel buildings. But World War I
40:54showed that you could not have an aviation industry if you did not have alloy steel and
41:02highly precise standards for every thread and fastener, every ball bearing, every
41:10single component that was involved in producing the modern manufactured world.
41:20And that happened in the United States between the wars. They wrote the standards when it said,
41:28this is 4340 steel. You knew you could rely on it. This is American. This is the standard of the
41:37world. The standard of the world is now located in so many places it can't be found.
41:45It's, it's a changed world because other countries have passed through the same
41:52forced refinement. If you want to make these products, you must have this basis
42:00for making them excellent. You can't just say, well, we bought from the cheapest supplier.
42:05What's the problem? Yeah, I think the, you know, there's the material action
42:18and all the motorcycles that Enfield is making, the look that they have, the sound that they have.
42:25They've made it with quality and they're doing things like build train race. So you have the
42:33entire cultural component, you know, build train race and motor America,
42:38female riders building their own bikes. Freddie Spencer goes in. He's, he's part of the team.
42:42And in the early days, they were just sending bikes to people and having them build race
42:46bikes and show up. But I think what they found to refine that was it's better to do the build
42:53in a confined period of time at a shop overseen by somebody who says, yep, we're going to all
43:00the safety wires. Perfect. And we've built the race bike that, that we should have kind of
43:05normalized the performance, I think, but build train race, they're doing stuff in flat track.
43:11Um, it's, you know, they're really, they're really supporting the culture in that way.
43:18And it's, uh, it's a big component. It's a big component for Enfield. The narrative
43:24is there. They did a little bit with the Himalayan, you know, water cooled technology
43:34specs. You know, that was part of the presentation and marketing because it is a more,
43:41it's an inventory type bike. So, you know, it's, it, it, it has a technical basis of sale,
43:47but most of the other stuff does not. And they're, you know, they, they talk about, you know,
43:51it's modern and everything, but it's really like look, sound, and feel just like Harley was. That
43:55was to me when one of the strange things about Harley's marketing associated with the soft tail
44:00redo in 2018 was that for decades, it was look, sound, and feel. And certainly they were
44:08engineering the daylights out of them to get them through sound and emissions and make them run
44:12right. And, you know, they, they put counterbalances in, oh my gosh, you know, in the,
44:16in the soft tails way back in what? Oh, 2000, 2001, something somewhere around there,
44:21twin cam 88B. And, uh, you know, they were, they were doing all of that, but
44:30when they got to soft tail, it was, here's all these new bikes, they kill the Dyna and they say
44:3925% more frame rigidity, this, that, and the other. And there's all these numbers.
44:45And I just thought, wow, that's a really, that's a kind of dramatic shift in messaging there. And I
44:50wonder, does that resonate? Like it, it just seemed like an interesting choice to me at the
44:57time, because it was, um, it's not, you can do that with an adventure bike. You can do that with
45:05the Pan America, but that's also a strange decision to me too, is like you've put everyone
45:12else out of business in cruisers, big cruisers, and you're just smashing the market and you can
45:19build the same, you know, a similar bike for a very long time and change the styling or change
45:25the paint colors. But the fundamental unit kind of stays the same. So you save a lot of money.
45:30And then you enter adventure bikes where it's more technically driven. It's not like super
45:35sport used to be where you got to redo it every two years, but it's technically driven. And the
45:40market is also smaller. Um, but they did it and it was a great bike. And I, um, you know,
45:47I wish them well on that, but, uh, it was just an interesting shift. And Enfield is,
45:52is really relying on what the bikes look like, how they feel and the culture around them.
45:56You know, this is the thing, the basis here is that we humans learn more from a story
46:04than we do from a list. We love stories. That's why we're on here talking to you because we're
46:14beaming out stories. And this is how we understand the world cause and effect association. And
46:26in the midst of all of this, we learned something. So I think that Harley Davidson and Royal Enfield
46:34realized that their best promotional idea possible is to create a story in which the
46:44prospective buyer wishes to become a part. 100%. Not to say, uh, 14,500 RPM, uh,
46:5654 inch wheelbase. Those things are important, but they're not a story.
47:02Yeah. Well, your self image, you know, that's where you're writing yourself into that. It's
47:05like, what do I want to look like? Yes. Whom do I want to be? Yep. And it's, it's really,
47:12I think it's one of the things that many manufacturers have struggled with in the
47:16cruiser space. You know, when you look at Ducati and Diablo and, um, you know, BMW, uh,
47:25with Harley and Indian, particularly here in America, but even, even elsewhere,
47:32there's a narrative and there's a burned in imprint. You know, I have a photograph
47:36of my grandfather on a 1929 Harley Davidson. Yes. And, uh,
47:47certainly I could have a photograph of my grandfather on a BMW in 1929.
47:51Yes. Or from 1929 or 1939 or whatever, but it doesn't look like a Harley. So BMW,
48:01maybe focus on the bikes that truly look like the bikes that you had. If you want to go retro,
48:08be true to thine own self or whatever you say, you know, um, but that, that narrative and that
48:14burn into the culture is what is so challenging. So Ducati, you know, is, is, is, is, is, is, is,
48:21so Ducati comes out with a great bike. I mean, we've picked it as the best cruiser. Diablo's
48:25really, really fun and wonderful to ride. And it's got its own personality and, um,
48:31but it isn't a volume sales thing. And, you know, I'm sure that the parent company is like,
48:37how come you ain't selling more of those? It's cause they didn't go to Iowa and, and look at
48:44the person in Iowa because that, you know, like that dude in Iowa, you know, with the Sturgis 96
48:50t-shirt kind of worn out, stretched neck, you know, corn fed, doesn't envision himself on a
48:59Diablo. It doesn't fit his narrative of who he wants to be. It's, you know, where's, where's
49:05the American West? The Harley Davidson is the national motorcycle. Yeah. There's no issue
49:12there. It's something that people think of. Um, there was one in a barn near where I grew up
49:20and they wanted $25 for it. Um, it's, it's always been there. It has always been there
49:30and has been, it has been said about Royal Enfield that every young man has an uncle or
49:37or a grandfather or someone who remembers Royal Enfield back when there has always been
49:45a Royal Enfield. There's a point also that I don't want to leave out here. And that is
49:52that the Enfield Bullet, which, uh, became the basis of production of RE bikes in India
50:02was a very advanced specification for a time. It had a swing arm rear suspension designed by
50:09Tony Wilson Jones, who was always up for innovation. He put plain bearings in his singles
50:19for a time. Um, and the Enfield Bullet had a telescopic fork at a time when a lot of manufacturers
50:29weren't sure whether they wanted leading link, trailing link, uh, some other form of front
50:38suspension, but the Royal Enfield Bullet pointed the way into the future. It wasn't long before
50:46Norton's Max racer had telescopic fork up front, swing arm suspension in the rear,
50:54all hydraulic damping, no more squeaky stick slip, dry friction dampers. So, uh,
51:04the Royal Enfield from which this line has descended was itself of an advanced specification
51:11as of 1949. So I like it. I like the idea of regular motorcycles that are reliable,
51:22that are reasonably priced and which don't shout out what role you have to take, just
51:31ride it, have a good time. They're accessible and inviting. And that's it. And they're doing
51:37the same thing with the narrative that Harley has done. And certainly it's the national motorcycle
51:43of India, just the way that Harley is here. But you know, Enfield's they're doing it, you know,
51:49Hero Honda sells 5 million machines a year. They're a lot, they sell mostly as Mark noted,
51:59small displacement bikes. Royal Enfield tried making mini bullets. People didn't want them.
52:09After World War II, Packard decided that returning servicemen would like a cheap Packard. No,
52:17returning servicemen wanted to look up to the Heights and see the aspirational Packard they
52:24might one day aspire to. So Royal Enfield know what they're doing and it's so far it's working.
52:36Well, it's been a wonderful transformation to watch and experience. Um, you know, seeing the
52:41factory at the time was my first trip to India and getting to meet Siddhartha Lal. It was just
52:48a quirky little manufacturer, a niche, I mean, a niche among niches and who wanted it? Not very
52:54many people. And, uh, they retained their core value and values and they put an enthusiast
53:05at the helm, someone who loved the product and loved the experience.
53:11And they, you know, you have to give Siddhartha Lal all the credit for,
53:16for setting that course and that vision to build the company into what it is now. And
53:25it's, it's in the hearts and minds of riders. That's the thing. It, it, it isn't,
53:29there's no connection to the 55 bullet from a, an experiential standpoint. You know, the 26 year
53:36old who's going into an Enfield dealer going like, man, that Interceptor 650 looks pretty cool.
53:44Doesn't even, it's a, I think it's there in the shadows, you know, it's, it's informing
53:51the product as it is, but it's the modern Royal Enfield has, has made its own mark on
53:59the generations. And that's where loyalty, that generational loyalty is what I was talking about,
54:05you know, earlier, there's so many millions of people who have generational
54:10relationships with bikes like Harley's and Honda's at this point, you know, you have Honda people and
54:17Kawasaki people that certainly you have generations of that now, but in terms of
54:21mass market, Harley is, Harley has done it for a long time. And Enfield is, is a hundred percent
54:26there. It's amazing. And they're just good. You know, you can go to SNS and you can get a
54:33750 kit. They've got big bore kits and camshafts and exhaust pipes. They were land speeding them.
54:40And I was talking to one of the guys over at, at SNS. I'm like, surely you've scattered these
54:44650s all over the place. He's like, no man, we built them up and they just run like, oh,
54:49that's cool. That's great news. Cause that's, that's part of the fun is being able to throw
54:54your 750 or eight. I think they have something in the 800 CC range that you can slap on top of
55:00there, throw some compression at it, pep it up right quick. Yep. Well, thanks for listening
55:10folks. That's a Royal Enfield. We as ever appreciate you listening to the show,
55:16watching the show on YouTube or any of your podcast platforms. Octane Lending is our sponsor
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55:44us continue to do this on a regular basis as we love to do it every week, every Wednesday,
55:4960 something times in a row. We love doing it and we love sharing with you and hearing
55:57from you in the comments and thanks for listening folks. We'll catch you next time.