Royal Enfield Himalayan had ‘too many issues’, admits head of product development

The head of Royal Enfield’s product development, Mr. Simon Warburton has admitted that the BS3 version of the Himalayan adventure motorcycle had too many issues. He also revealed that Royal Enfield had stopped production of the motorcycle in order to fix the issue. The bike was relaunched with fuel injection, as the BS4 model. Mr. Warburton revealed that the motorcycle maker also delayed the launch of the Himalayan in Europe in order to fix all issues, and deliver a trouble-free motorcycle.

Here are some of the comments he made to VisorDown,

We had some issues when it first came out. We’ve been doing a lot of work on it. That’s why it was late coming into Europe, basically. I don’t think there was one particular issue. There were too many issues. We recognise the need to improve from where we were. No question about that. The new factories have much better quality systems embedded in. The equipment on the line is better. The checks and balances put in and the in-house manufacturing processes are better. There’s an enormous focus on quality right now. It’s a really tough regime at the moment.

Mr. Warburton has also hinted that since the quality process at Royal Enfield has improved tremendously, the upcoming Interceptor 650 and the Continental GT650 twins will have much better quality levels. This should come as a positive signal to prospective buyers of the new Royal Enfield twins. Even Siddhartha Lal, the CEO of Eicher – the company that owns Royal Enfield – has revealed that the new Twins will leave the factory only after making sure that they were issue-free.

Current owners of the BS4 Himalayan reveal that the new version of the adventure motorcycle has far fewer quality and reliability issues than the BS3 model. So, Royal Enfield focus on quality seems to be working. Also, the company has now launched the Himalayan BS4 in multiple international markets including the UK, Australia and France, which again indicates that it is now confident of the product doing well in quality conscious markets abroad.