With that as criteria, the Bullet Electra X delivers in spades.
If this motorcycle doesn’t blow away your jaundiced cynicism and make you grin
from ear-to-ear when riding it, then you need to dust off your high school
yearbook and remind yourself you were young once.
In an industry so ardently beholden to mechanical advances, it
is refreshing to see a manufacturer so blithely unconcerned with technological
development. The Royal Enfield is the quintessential basic motorcycle.
 The kickstarter recalls
another, simpler era. (Click image to enlarge)
This minimalist approach is reflected in the business side of
things too. The exclusive distributor of Royal Enfield in the United States
proclaims to have seven employees and a dog on the premises. However, the
operation manages to provide a toll-free technical support line that is answered
by an actual human being. How novel!
For the inevitable yearning for more power, there are
aftermarket high-performance parts, as well as kits to turn your bike into a
café racer or a trials bike—even a sidecar is available.
As long as America is outsourcing jobs to India, it is only
fitting that we should be importing some nostalgia from them. Owing to its
eclecticism—and the fact it has remained somewhat untouched by modernity—the
Royal Enfield Bullet appeals to a very wide and diverse range of motorcycle
enthusiasts. Whether tooling around town, or scrambling down a country back
road, the Electra X is a good, clean kick in the pants. Any time the Bullet is
parked it attracts admirers, whether they be motorcyclists or pedestrians.
The brakes are lousy, the power is M.I.A., the headlight is dim
and the thing vibrates—but don’t get me wrong, the bike is an absolute blast.
And, to cap off the walk down memory lane, it just wouldn’t be right if you
didn’t have to place a drip pan under the old girl to catch one or two errant
drips of motor oil.
www.enfieldmotorcycles.com
|
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
