A Motorcycle Made in India Gives the Best Bang for Your Biking Buck
Royal Enfield delivers on its “iconic and affordable” promise.
The only flaw in Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited is that he does not have the Whitman brothers—Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman—ride across the sumptuous Indian countryside on a Royal Enfield motorcycle. (They ride a Honda, which, I guess, is fair. Honda owns 26% of the motorcycle market in India.)
But I would have made it a Royal Enfield. The Indian connection is perfect: The formerly British brand is a publicly offered subsidiary of Eicher Motors Ltd. and located in Chennai, India; it manufactures all of the 900,000 bikes it sells worldwide each year there, too. (Design and engineering are handled out of the Bruntingthrope Proving Ground near Leicester, England, and in Chennai, India.) Myriad Bollywood stars, plus Brad Pitt, are fans.