We are again talking about the Royal Enfield, but if a company has been around for more than 100 years, then they deserve to be talked about. Today we are discussing a motorcycle which apparently left the country a few months back because it wasn’t receiving any love from the people. On the other hand, people say that the bike wasn’t everything they had hoped for. So let’s just take a deep breath and understand all the reasons why the Continental GT was a great bike and also why it wasn’t. Let’s talk about the positives first.True Cafe racer styling:
In this price range, the Continental GT was the only authentic cafe racer. The bike certainly looked the part. It had a single seat, retro lights coupled with a modern dash and clip-on handlebars. The seating position was forward biased with rear set foot pegs for better handling around the corners. The minimalist styled tank with GT badge was a reminiscence of the old GT 250. Overall the bike looked like an authentic and very well put together cafe racer.
State of the art equipment:
Royal Enfield gave the GT 535, everything that they had at that time. The bike had a specially designed Chassis made by Harris Performance, who are pioneers in making motorcycle frames. It was flex-free and held the bike really well. In short, this chassis made Continental GT the best handling Royal Enfield in the history of the company. The front suspension was revised according to the sporty nature of the bike and the rear Paioli shocks provided enough stiffness to take on the most challenging of hairpins. Tyres were Pirelli sports demon with a 100/90 tyre at the front and 130/70 at the rear. Brakes were also from Brembo with a floating calliper at the front and a fixed one at the back.
Now its time to talk about what went wrong with the bike and most of us have an idea of what it was.
Poor Engine performance:Continental GT may have been the most powerful Royal Enfield on the market but it was not fast enough in real world condition. The engine of the bike produced a massive amount of torque which helped it in acceleration, but past 90 km/h the engine used to vibrate like Nokia 3310 on vibrate mode. This made it unstable and rendered all those expensive equipment useless. The damage was already done, when the GT 535 came out on the market, it had state of the line build quality but below average engine performance. Thus it became a Rs 2.05 lakh rupees Motorcycle which nobody wanted. The company decided to pull the plug on GT’s production for India as its still being sold in Europe.
The 535 cc pushrod engine made the bike a disaster but the upcoming new GT 650 with a parallel twin 650 cc engine will finally be the true cafe racer we all were waiting for. The new Engine will be the smoothest running engine from Royal Enfield hosting 8 valves and a 270-degree crank rotation. Both of these factors will make sure that the GT 650 hits a ton, in terms of Miles per hour.
Do you agree with this article? Is GT 535 your favourite motorcycle? Let us know in the comments below and For everything related to Motorcycles stay tuned to BikesMedia.
By: Yetnesh Dubey
