Royal Enfield Starts Deliveries of Interceptor 650: First pictures

Royal Enfield has begin the first customer deliveries of its latest motorcycle – the Interceptor 650. The motorcycle  maker’s Nerul brand store has begin deliveries in Maharashtra and here are a few pictures of the same. Deliveries of  the Continental GT 650 is also expected to begin shortly.

Royal Enfield has opened bookings for the 650 twins across all its dealerships in India. The motorcycles were  launched a few weeks ago internationally, and less than 10 days ago, the retro motorcycle brand launched the  Interceptor 650 and Continental GT 650 in India.

Royal Enfield stunned the market by launching the Interceptor 650 at a starting price of Rs. 2.35 lakhs, and the  Continental GT 650 at Rs. 2.49 lakhs. Both motorcycles are among the cheapest twin cylinder bikes sold in India  market, and represent terrific value for money.

The bikes have been developed specifically to grow Royal Enfield’s marketshare in the mid segment space both in India and abroad. They feature a range of improvements when compared to older Royal Enfields and initial reviews have been anything but highly positive.

Both bikes use a newly developed 647cc, four stroke parallel twin engine. This air-oil cooled motor puts out 47 Bhp  of peak power and 52 Nm of peak torque, and uses a 270 degree crank firing angle for great low end torque. The engine gets fuel injection, a single overhead camshaft and four valve heads.

The gearbox offered with this motor is a 6 speed unit with a slipper clutch as standard. The engine revs up to 7,500  rpm before the limiter kicks in. Reviews note that this engine is the smoothest ever from Royal Enfield, and this  allows the motorcycles to be really ridden hard.

Both bikes accelerate to 100 Kph in less than 7 seconds, which means that can shame many high end cars. Top speed is in excess of 160 Kmph, which means that highway overtaking and cruising will be a breeze. The top speed of both  motorcycles is more than double the Indian speed limit for two wheelers. The idea behind this top speed is also to  make the motorcycles highway worthy in international markets, many of which have freeway speed limits in excess of  110 Kph.

The Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 and Continental GT 650 will be sold in a single spec globally. What this means is  both international and Indian buyers will get the same motorcycle, and there won’t be any compromises for either  markets. As for safety, both bikes get dual channel ABS as standard. The slipper clutch can also be considered a safety feature as it allows the rider to rapidly downshift and shed speed safely.

Coming to other cycle parts on the motorcycles, both of them use a double cradle frame engineered by Harris Engineering. Front suspension consists of telescopic front forks while rear suspension is taken care of of gas charged shock absorbers. There are disc brakes on both wheels. The wheels are spoked and the tyres are tube-type. Royal Enfield has no plans of offering tubeless tyres, and buyers will have to resort after market options to make the spoked rims accept tubeless tyres.

Via Team-BHP