Pioneers in oil cooling

From The Motor Cycle, April 22nd 1920.

Carberry announces engine production in India

We have written about Carberry in the past, the producer of V-Twin Enfields based on two iron barrel Bullets. 14 bikes were produced in Australia and then production was moved to India. Now they have announced the production of the first engines there. We all wish them good luck! After all, it was our claim that V-Twin Enfields would bring about world peace!

Check out their new website and Facebook page.

750 spotted

Spy shots of the new model in Spain, India and the UK.

Video about the new Redditch models

Street Singles

Motorcyclist Magazine has an article in the March/April issue about "Street Singles". It does not appear to be online. It compares the Conti, aYamaha SR400, the Honda CBR300R and the Suzuki S40. Comments for each bike are brief. Due to copyright reasons I just transcribe the intro paragraph and the one about the Conti.

Remarkably a next article titled "Modern retros to the rescue" talks about Triumph, Ducati, BMW, Yamaha but does not mention Royal Enfield.

Interesting review

Initially skeptic rider falls for a B5 in about 6 minutes.

Return to the UK

We reproduce here the post by Nigel in the Facebook page of Royal Enfield GB for those readers that do not use Facebook. Of interest may also be our previous related post.

Friday History this week is a veritable novella involving a tea clipper, some motorcycles, escaping cockroaches, fraud and prison sentences and a Japanese camera. When the last Interceptor came out of the Westwood factory in 1970 there were no more new Royal Enfields for sale in the UK for the next seven years until Slater Bros, Laverda Importers based at Collington, near Bromyard Herefordshire took on a contract to import Madras-made Enfields. So you don't think I'm making all this up, I'll reprint Roger Slater's letter to me -

“Hello Nigel, Sorry for the delay in replying, been very busy this week. Sometime in 1976 I read a reminder that Enfield's were still being built in India. This was generally unknown in the UK or had been forgotten. They were never mentioned or imported - time for a trip to India. A few days later I was on an EL- AL 747 to Bombay with an Air India connecting flight to Madras. I was met at Madras airport by a charming fellow by the name of Raja Gopalan, the PRO. Monday morning a tour of the factory - what an eye opener that was! I was horrified to see a gang of workmen unloading a truck of large sheets of steel. They were sliding each sheet to the rear of the truck to the point it would slide off on its own. The workers were almost naked even down to no footwear as the steel sheets crashed down an inch or so in front of their bare toes. In the office there were ancient mechanical typewriters and all figuring done on Abacus, the speed and dexterity of the operators was astonishing, the company limo was an Indian made Morris Oxford.

The upshot of this most interesting visit was the first load of 350 Enfield's arriving at Collington in 1977. They sold fairly well despite several problems. They were very underpowered, had poor brakes and the Villiers carburettors were not suitable. The biggest problem that my brother Richard soon found was damage in shipping which all had to rectified by us at our cost. The crates were big strong solid timber but the bikes were not properly secured in the crates. At one point I drove our flat-bed truck down to Bristol docks to pick up a load of bikes that had just arrived. This was a time warp experience going back to the days of the tall Clipper tea carrying vessels! The dock was exactly as it was in the sailing ship days. Only difference was that the sailing ship was replaced by a very scruffy looking tramp steamer with the name THE STATE OF KARALA. The crew were all Indian, semi-naked same as at the factory. They were running up and down gang planks carrying loads of cargo on their heads. Like the old sailing ships, there were huge cargo hatches opened where a steam crane lowered a big net down for the crew to fill with tea chests; the net was then closed like a trawler's net then hoisted across the wharf into the dockside warehouse. One side of the net would be let go so that the tea chests rolled out into a big heap. Imagine my consternation when I went into the warehouse to get the Enfields loaded. There they were in a big heap at all sorts of angles as they fell out of the net. The crates were not damaged but the bikes simply rattled around doing damage to speedos, head lights, tanks, seats etc etc. This constant damage was making the whole venture unprofitable - time for another trip to Madras to get it sorted out.

I took with me a sketch of the Laverda crates, less than half the weight of the Indian ones but the bike was securely fastened to the main spine of the crate. The crates were dimensioned precisely so that by double stacking, 40 crates would fit into a 40 foot container. Next was a requirement for containerisation, no more 'tea clippers'! Unexpected problem, there was no container service out of Madras. Next item for discussion was the bike itself. We wanted a 500, an Amal or other suitable carburettor, better brakes simply by replacing the compressed camel dung with proper Ferodo brake linings. All this was met with much 'head wagging' that I took to be agreement - it was sometime later that I realised that Indian head nods were opposite to European! The MD then informed me that they were not interested in making a bike more suited to the export market. He went on to explain that they were selling all of their production on the home market where the current 350 was perfect - no point in spending money on a new export version. (Nigel - So nothings changed there in 40 years then!) They did however agree to consider the new crate design. Next shipment Richard found that the crates were now as heavy as the bike inside. The timber was very thick and extra packing was employed which did go some way to preventing damage but the bike was still not properly secured to the crate. Another interesting item Richard found in the crates were huge cockroaches that he christened 'Bombay runners' as they bolted across the floor!

I left the scene in 1980 to set up a Laverda importation business in the USA. My brother Richard continued with the Enfields for a while but in late 1981 he went to Madras with the intent of terminating the agreement. In order not to leave the factory in the lurch he recommended Evesham Motorcycles take it on to ensure a seamless transition. Raja Gopalan said he could probably release us from the contract if Richard gave him his Japanese camera that he had purchased in Singapore two years earlier! The choice of Evesham motorcycles turned into a shambles; Richard soon discovered it was managed by a couple of crooks going under the name Smallwood and Chapman. As I understand it that arrangement did not last long - Smallwood was a known con man who later received jail time for embezzlement.

The Sundaram family who owned Enfield India sold out to Eicher a few years later who set to work at once to do the job properly with a big investment of R&D and a firm eye on expanding production. Had we known this was in the offing at the time, Richard would probably have hung on to finally get the new bikes that we were asked for. One of my all time favourite bikes was a '61 Big Head 500 Bullet. I imported it about 10 years ago off Andy Ternan. It was really smooth, went very well indeed, I regret ever letting it go.

Onwards and upwards

Roger S”

Notes - Slater Bros is still going strong at Collington and handles all spares supplies for Laverda in the UK. Next week we look at 'What Happened Next' with Bavanar, Wilf Green returns to the Royal Enfield fold after a 25 year absence and we take it through the Watsonian period and now MotoGB, not forgetting solid, dependable Hitchcocks who supply our spares to keep us all on the road! Photos – Roger Slater racing the Egli-Vincent (No2) way back when, Slater Bros Collington today, a Slater Bros advert and a 350 badged as an Enfield. Eicher brought back the 'Royal' following the takeover in 1994.

No worries

The Man thinks Royal Enfield should not worry about the entrance of Bajaj in the 350cc market. He does not see it as a zero sum game.

Growth in February!

19%!.

Where in London? Part V

Reader Nigel has put together a nice article on the London depots, using in part info from our previous posts (1, 2, 3, 4) and additional very useful local information. We reproduce it here for those of you without Facebook accounts:

This week's Friday History is a collaborative effort with Simon Taylor and Jorge Pullin to whom grateful thanks for all the info and photos; we are concentrating on the retail outlets, showrooms and service depots in London and Birmingham. As early as 1907 Royal Enfield had an office and showroom at 48 Holborn Viaduct which continued right up to 1939 but when the first sales catalogue after the war appeared in 1947 the London showroom was listed as 221 Tottenham Court Rd., the Holborn Viaduct building having been destroyed in the Blitz. No London addresses were listed by 1950, probably due to the establishment of Gander and Gray at nearby Manor Park as Royal Enfield main dealers for London - the company's own showroom would have become superfluous. (Go to http://www.hitchcocksmotorcycles.com/home to read more about Gander and Gray). In 1935 the company acquired the ground floor of the Holborn Viaduct building and the service depot was listed as 49 Farringdon St; I should explain that Holborn Viaduct crossed Farringdon St and the building complex occupied the corner plot on two ground floor levels as Farringdon Street as on a hill. The offices and showroom were in the building fronting Holborn Viaduct and the service depot fronted Farringdon Street around the corner. Simon Taylor knows the area well and writes '48 Holborn Viaduct is the same building as 49 Farringdon Street, it’s the floor below and at 90 degrees, as the viaduct crosses Farringdon street at that point. It got bombed, but the corner building which contained the public stairs between the two (built with the viaduct) survives'. From 1927 until it was moved into the Farringdon St building, the service depot occupied 5-9 Hatton Wall. Tom McDonnell, brother of RE GB member Gerard McDonnell, is CEO of Monterosa TV Productions company which is located on the second floor of 5-9 Hatton Wall and he tells me that previously the building was a jewellery factory (makes sense as its just round the corner from Hatton Garden). During the time it was occupied by RE the showroom was on the ground floor and access to the service department on the upper floors was from the alleyway at the rear of the building by an external lift which you can see from the photos. The other Royal Enfield showroom and service depot was at 24 Broad St, Birmingham during the 1920's and '30's but that was close enough to Redditch that it didn't need listing in the sales catalogues. The pics show Broad St in 1952 and what it looks like now, {screen grabs from Google and Bing}. Its very difficult to identify precisely where each building was located (apart from Hatton Wall) following the Luftwaffe's Town Planning policy for our inner cities of 1940-1 and subsequent redevelopment. Photos in order, 49 Farringdon St (Holborn Viaduct was round the corner to the right), next 5-9 Hatton Wall, No 6 is copy of addresses from 1936 catalogue, then 221 Tottenham Court Rd, aerial view of London locations, last two Broad St Birmingham 1952 and today.

Heavy fine

After this, Enfields developed a reputation as fast bikes. From The Motor Cycle, May 27th, 1920.

Using this calculator one finds out that 5 Pounds 5s of 1920 would be 184 Pounds of today using just inflation. But comparing to people's incomes it is more like 1,300 Pounds. A heavy fine indeed!

Badass

An article in GQ India with some tidbits about the "Badass history" of Royal Enfield. I wish they had more detail of that first figure showing the map of the factory.

Walter Astrada update

We have covered Walter Astrada's trips through Asia -obviously on a Royal Enfield- in the past. Here is a compilation of some pictures he has taken (article is in Spanish).

More on Enfield ambulances

We covered the matter of the Royal Enfield ambulances in Exeter in the past. Here is another article. From The Motor Cycle, February 14th 1918.