Millionth Bullet?

In an article in 2009, a writer in Cycle World seemed to suggest that one million Bullets have been produced. I don't think the article was making a precise claim. But let us review things: the bike we now call the Bullet was introduced in 1949 (there was an earlier model called Bullet in the 1930's but it was a very different bike). So to produce a million Bullets would require an average of about 16,000 bikes per year of production. Now, there were many years in which production was considerably smaller than that. Gordon May in his book "Made in India" says that in the 1970's between 10,000 and 22,000 Bullets were produced per year. He then mentions that in 1996 21,621 Bullets were produced. And in recent times production has picked up a lot, with slightly over 300,000 bikes produced last year.

So my claim is that either the millionth Bullet has already been produced or is close to being produced. In the opinion of this humble blogger, Royal Enfield should mark the occasion with a celebration and lots of publicity, like Honda did with its 300th millionth bike recently.