Royal Enfield will officially open bookings for Continental GT 650 and Interceptor 650 in November and deliveries will begin soon after that
Royal Enfield is finally going to open bookings for Continental GT 650 and Interceptor 650 in November. Earlier, RE was planning to launch 650 Twins in global markets first, now the company has decided to launch the new cruiser bikes in India and other markets simultaneously.
The 650 Twins were expected to be launched in the first half of 2018, but the company had some production issues and took some time to solve these problems. Siddhartha Lal, MD and CEO, Eicher Motors said that the media drives of 650 Twins will happen in California in September and the company is planning to launch the new models in important global markets by the end of this fiscal year.
The company will ramp up production of 650 Twins only after four months and until then the bike will be available in limited numbers only. Even though the company won’t have any production issues with new models, but the ramp will be slow as they don’t want to take any risk with these bikes like Himalayan, which had so many quality problems.
Siddhartha Lal said that waiting period of Royal Enfield bikes is expected to increase in coming months as plants are running in full capacity and festival season will increase demand, but not the supply. The newly launched Thunderbird X and Classic Gunmetal Grey has more demand than company expected.
Royal Enfield is expected to sell 9,50,000 units by the end of this fiscal year compared to 8,40,000 units last year. The phase II of the Vallam Vadangal plant will begin production in the second half of next fiscal year, which will help the company to improve volume and until then the monthly volume will be around 84,000 units.
The Interceptor 650 and Continental GT 650 made their global debut at EICMA last year and they are powered by same 648 cc twin-cylinder, air-cooled engine with electronic fuel injection producing 47 bhp at 7,100 rpm and 52 Nm at 4,000 rpm. This engine is mated to 6 speed gearbox and the 650 Twins are expected to be priced at Rs. 3 lakh (Ex-Showroom).