Royal Enfield Interceptor & Continental GT 650 Twins BEAT KTM 390s & TVS Apache 310

Indian retro motorcycle manufacturer had launched two of their most anticipated models – Interceptor 650 and Continental GT 650 in Indian market last year. Ever since then the demand has been rising and the waiting period for these motorcycles shot up to 6 months. Sales figure for the same motorcycle for the month of January 2019 are out.

Royal Enfield motorcycles sold 1,069 units of Continental GT 650 and Interceptor 650s in the month of January. Other motorcycles from the brand that did well were Thunderbird 350 cruiser and adventure motorcycle Himalayan. They saw a positive growth of 43 percent and 5 percent respectively in January 2019 compared to the same month last year.

On the other hand, TVS Apache RR310 which was launched in 2017 and KTM 390 Duke did not perform well in January 2019. Last year same month KTM had sold 1,041 units of Duke 390 in India whereas this year KTM only sold 279 units.

TVS can relax a bit because it saw a growth of 16 percent in the sales of Apache RR310. Last month 282 units were sold compared to the 242 units in January 2018. But these numbers are still very low when compared to the number of units that Royal Enfield has sold in such a short time.

Royal Enfield had launched the Interceptor 650 and the Continental GT 650 motorcycles in India at very competitive price. Price of Interceptor 650 starts from Rs. 2.34 lakh and Continental GT 650 starts from Rs. 2.57 lakh. This makes it the cheapest twin-cylinder motorcycles available on sale in India.

It gets a 648-cc parallel-twin, air-cooled engine which will churn out maximum power of 47 bhp at 7,100 rpm and peak torque of 52 Nm at 4,000 rpm. It is paired to a 6 speed manual gearbox with a slipper clutch as standard. No other Royal Enfield has ever received these features.

A double cradle frame holds the motorcycles together, and also gives them sharp handling. Coming to other modern bits on the Royal Enfield Continental GT 650 and Interceptor 650, the bikes get disc brakes on both wheels, with dual channel ABS as standard. The Royal Enfield twins are the smoothest and fastest motorcycles produced by the company in India.

Royal Enfield’s factory in Chennai’s Oragadam has been hit by a worker’s strike. This strike resulted in production loss of over 3,000 Interceptors Continental GTs. The waiting periods of these motorcycles has now increased to over 3 months across India. The retro-motorcycle maker plans to double production from March 2019, and this is expected to bring down waiting times for these best selling motorcycles.

As per the sales chart of January 2019 Honda Activa is the best selling two-wheeler in the scooter segment followed by Suzuki Access, TVS Jupiter and Honda Dio. The best selling motorcycle is Hero’s Splendor followed by Hero HF Deluxe and Honda CB Shine.