More photos of the Royal Enfield cafe racer

The most perfect modern execution of the cafe racer theme we’ve seen, Royal Enfield is applying bizarrely little emphasis to this near-production concept. These new photos come from user Parrys on the Team-BHP forum. A Mumbai resident, he saw the bike in person at the India Auto Expo. This weekend, we spoke to Royal Enfield’s CEO about his new cafe project.

“At this show, we were showing essentially, a work in progress,” Dr. Venki Padman told us. “...launch around fall of this year.” The company has yet to put the bike into a photo studio.

This side-on shot provides probably the best idea of why this design is so remarkable in a sea of me-too cafe conversions and retro models.

Of this bike, HFL contributor, motorcycle designer and industry analyst Michael Uhlarik said, “This Royal Enfield cafe racer epitomizes the look of the classic 1955-1965 British sport motorcycle. The best part is that unlike half-assed attempts like Triumph’s Thruxton which is heavily compromised due to production commonality considerations with the standard Bonneville, or the utterly pedestrian looking Suzuki TU250 or Kawasaki W650, this motorcycle adheres to the long horizontal line that characterized all the great motorcycles of the cafe racer era.”

“Finally, unlike the Japanese (or Chinese) copies Royal Enfield is The Real Thing. It may be made in India, but the company literally acquired the English production tooling and all of the company’s intellectual property when it moved, making RE one of the oldest and most historic motorcycle brands in the world.”