Royal Enfield E-Book

Greg Pullen

• Herausgeber: The Crowood Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 332

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Royal Enfield's famous motor - 'made like a gun' - hints at the factory's origins, but few appreciate that it is the oldest motorcycle manufacturer in existence that can boast of continuous production. In addition, its famous Bullet can claim the longest motorcycle production run of all time. Greg Pullen charts the rise, fall and rise again of Royal Enfield, from the company's pre-motorcycle beginnings in Redditch, through the impact of two World Wars, the importance of exports to India and subsequent establishment of factories there, to changes in ownership, recently launched models and new concept bikes for the future. With 190 colour photographs, this book includes: the V-twins, from the 1930s K and KX range to a glimpse of the concept V-twin shown in 2018; the singles, from 2-strokes to side-valve 4-strokes, and the ohv version that first used the Bullet name, through to the new singles built in India. The British Bullet: its arrival in 1948 and production in the UK, the original orders from India and subsequent setting up of production there are discussed. The 250s, (1958-68), including the Turbo Twins, and the big twins, from the 1948 500 Town to the final interceptor in 1970, including the 800cc prototype and the Clymer Indians are covered. The new twins: the 650cc Royal Enfield interceptor and Continental GT twins and the Bobber concept bike are discussed. Competition success is covered, with notable ISDT achievements, star rider Johnny Brittain and racing the big twins, and Geoff Duke in the GP5. Finally, the British factories and the new opportunities with the Indian factories are remembered.

Leseprobe

A COMPLETE HISTORY

A COMPLETE HISTORY

First published in 2021 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

[email protected]

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2021

© Greg Pullen 2021

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 853 5

CONTENTS

Introduction

Timeline

1

BEGINNINGS

2

THE V-TWINS

3

SINGLES BETWEEN THE WARS

4

THE WAR YEARS

5

THE BRITISH BULLET

6

THE OTHER SINGLES

7

THE 250s

8

THE BIG TWINS

9

POST-WAR COMPETITION SUCCESS

10

REMEMBERING THE BRITISH FACTORIES

11

NEW BEGINNINGS – THE INDIAN FACTORIES

12

NEW HIT SINGLES

13

THE NEW TWINS

Index

INTRODUCTION

My interest in Royal Enfield started with a very particular, and really quite peculiar, event: the appearance in our local motorcycle dealer’s shop window of an old Interceptor parallel twin. Richard Stevens’ eponymous business is a long-standing Yamaha dealership, a follow-on from a fine road-racing career. I had first admired Richard as a front runner in the North Gloucestershire Motor Cycle Club races, which cheerfully ignored the fact that our local circuits – Castle Combe, Keevil, Wroughton, Hullavington and Colerne – were far south of Gloucester, in deepest Wiltshire. Only Castle Combe survives as a race track today, although Wroughton was included in The Grand Tour – the Amazon show featuring Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond – as a test track, the Eboladrome (apparently when viewed from above its layout bears a similarity to the profile of the Ebola virus).

The new Interceptor in chrome at the Royal Enfield Café and mini-museum in Goa.

But back in the 1970s and well into the 1980s, these circuits – old RAF bases, with perimeter tracks pressed into road-racing service – regularly hosted full programmes of motorcycle racing, cheered on by thousands of local fans. Car parks heaved with everything from sports mopeds, through the last of the big British bikes, to the latest Japanese rocket ships. The car parks were almost worth the price of admission alone as a giant motorcycle show, while the racers in the pits found themselves on the end of countless fans’ questions and good wishes of Godspeed. And one of those racers was Richard Stevens, a quietly spoken local mechanic with a fierce turn of pace that had won him the Avon Tyres’ 250 national production title – sponsored by Bike magazine – in 1975. Richard had previously competed in the Ultra Lightweight TT that claimed Gilberto Parlotti’s life in 1972 and heralded the end of the road for the Isle of Man’s hosting of the British motorcycle Grand Prix. His final TT entry was in the 1978 Formula 3 race on a Honda Yoshimura 460 four that I had sold to his sponsor after a crash. This was the year of Mike Hailwood’s famous return to the Island.

So when Richard stuck a restored Royal Enfield Interceptor – an archetypal big British vertical twin from the feted post-war boom – in his Devizes shop window in 2009, I had to ask why. This is a small-scale, old-school dealership with a bell on the front door that inevitably summons Richard from the workshop in the hope of selling some off-road spares or a new 12V battery. Or, on this occasion, a nosy neighbour wanting to ask about the old fogey in the window. What I discovered over the next few minutes became a cover story for the bestselling Classic Bike magazine in 2010, with editor Ben Miller cheerfully caning the Interceptor along the Devizes to Swindon road. It turned out that Richard wasn’t so much quietly spoken as completely silent on his part in a hugely important part of British motorcycling history, of which he had been a first-hand witness.

Chrome and Candy Crush Orange Interceptors on the beach. ROYAL ENFIELD

Richard casually told me that he had been the development rider for Royal Enfield’s Interceptor, based at the Bradford-on-Avon workshop, which was actually an old mine that the Redditch factory had adopted as a safe haven for World War II but somehow never left. The Wiltshire branch of Royal Enfield actually outlived the original Worcestershire facilities, not only expecting Richard to test the bike’s reliability by piling on the road miles, but also proving its speed at MIRA (the Motor Industry Research Association) in Warwickshire – and now the home of Royal Enfield’s research and development base, which recently invited Richard to sample the Interceptor’s modern namesake. When Enfield folded in the UK Richard was working on an 800 Interceptor that he wound up to 128mph (206km/h) at MIRA, alongside (and overtaking) a dumbstruck Percy Tait testing a Trident. (‘Percy Tait was like a farmer – well, he was a farmer.’ Thank you, Richard, another childhood hero brought down to size.)

Richard Stevens (left) on Series 2 Interceptor racer c.1970 with Chris Ludgate on a Series 1. Note Richard’s TT100 front tyre, the latest thing from Dunlop. RICHARD STEVENS

Richard raced and won on the Interceptor – Motor Cycle News (MCN) made much of this with a front-page splash showing ‘Cal Rayborn trying out the new racer’. But it turns out that the photograph was taken riding round Heston Services car park, Richard having brought the bike up in a van, and he even had to lend the mighty Rayborn his riding kit. Inevitably nostalgia caught up with Richard, so he tracked down and restored the Interceptor before placing it in his window.

Richard Stevens with his restored Interceptor on a freezing February photoshoot for Classic Bike magazine.

‘You must have seen these in old magazines,’ Richard queried, shuffling through a shelfful of memorabilia – topped by TT Replicas awarded for his Isle of Man races. No, I definitely had not seen the yellowing magazines, but then I didn’t start buying motorcycle publications until 1975, when Richard was winning championships on his Yamaha RD250. Yet there he was, late sixties monochrome cool looking sideways into the camera in Geoff Duke style one-piece black leathers aboard one of the fastest British motorcycles of the era.

‘So,’ I ventured, ‘was that the best bike you ever rode?’ Richard looked aghast. ‘No, that would be the Suzuki Super Six. That was a lovely bike, especially on the Isle of Man.’ My antennae were reset to business as usual and Richard’s association with quarter-litre, two-stroke, six-speed twins was confirmed. British bikes really were so last century. Even today, Richard’s as happy to parade a Japanese lightweight at Mallory Park’s Festival of 1000 bikes as he is to show off the big Enfield.

And yet, my curiosity had been piqued and to discover such a gap in my knowledge of local history, never mind motorcycling knowledge, was a shock. So a few days later I parked my Ducati Monster close to the entrance of the old mine that had been the Royal Enfield factory entrance and from which Richard had fired an Interceptor on timeless occasions fifty years earlier. Greeted by a stocky chap with a ponytail and fluorescent vest, our initial rapport cooled when I asked if I might see what lay inside. Secure storage apparently. No chance of a visit. Hardly surprising, given that some of these mines were converted to a prospective home for the British government if World War III ever happened. At a dead end, I went home and rang the people at Classic Bike magazine. Yes, they’d love Richard’s story. So I wrote it, they printed it and I forgot about Royal Enfield.

But inevitably Richard’s tales led to trails to follow and a visit to India made me appreciate that while a 350 Bullet single might be small beer in the UK, it was a fine claret with a personal sommelier in its adopted home. The pride the locals have for Royal Enfield is remarkable; two examples of this are, firstly, noticing an unloved Tata Nano – the super cheap microcar that UK business pages once declared the nemesis of motorcycling in India and a possible future hit in European cities – I asked a young local why they never became popular. ‘They sound like a tuk-tuk,’ he laughed. ‘Anyway you could buy a 350 Bullet for the same money,’ he added with a certainty that even an Englishman out in the midday sun could not argue with.

The second revelation came on the road to the Royal Enfield Café in northern Goa, when we were overtaken by a 350 Bullet. ‘The best motorcycle in India,’ offered the taxi driver. ‘Never mind all the Japanese bikes. It’s the sound of a Royal Enfield: it makes you happy.’ His smile proved that this was true. My determination to delve into Royal Enfield’s history, both in the UK and India, was settled.

A Bullet overtakes our taxi in Goa in January 2020: ‘The sound of a Royal Enfield: it makes you happy,’ offered the driver.

And then, in a bout of serendipity, a friend and fellow Ducati obsessive inherited his father’s Model K, a mighty pre-war Royal Enfield V-twin: he liked it, and I was intrigued.

I seem to have come full circle, from sceptic to fan. My first impression of Royal Enfield came courtesy of a road test in December 1977’s Bike magazine. At £695, the Indian-built 350 Bullet was pricier than a Japanese 250 twin, despite having such modest performance that the tester reported ‘hills flattened its acceleration to less than that of a Honda 125 single’ and the front brake was ‘terrifyingly ineffective’. Back then, Norton-Villiers Triumph (NVT), the dying breath of the British motorcycle industry, owned a 30 per cent stake in Enfield’s Indian outpost and had considered importing the Bullet before Slater Brothers – of Laverda Jota fame – stepped in. But that 1977 test under the headline ‘At last, the 1952 show’ concluded with NVT chairman Dennis Poore observing that ‘following an evaluation of the 350 Bullet no one seemed that keen [on importing it]’. Famed journalist Peter Watson added ‘I think I know why’.

The Ashleigh works, Redditch, on Bromsgrove Road, a short distance from and very similar to the original. It is an old needle-making factory with the owner’s villa beside, looking very similar to the Givry works at Hunt End that were the beginnings of Royal Enfield. J. THOMAS

Yet here we are more than forty years later with Enfield’s star rising once more, their bargain basement pricing no indication of the massive leap in quality (and brakes!) that now outshines far more expensive marques. Many have come and gone, but Enfield has remained a constant, ignoring fashion in favour of an honest, straightforward motorcycling experience. Yet there has been glamour, innovation and competition success as well along the way. The Royal Enfield story includes a glorious past, a promising future and much to relish in achievement spanning three centuries. Royal Enfield’s famous motto – ‘made like a gun’ – hints at the factory’s origins, but few appreciate that it is the oldest motorcycle manufacturer boasting continuous production in existence. In addition, its famous Bullet can claim the longest motorcycle production run of all time. When the factory produced its first powered vehicles, the horse was still the fastest means of transport.

The origins of the Royal Enfield marque can be traced back to a small light engineering firm founded in Redditch, Worcestershire, in mid-Victorian times to make needles. Expanding into bicycle manufacture by the turn of the century, it morphed into the Enfield Cycle Company, makers of the ‘Royal Enfield’ bicycle. The first powered vehicles came in the twilight years of the nineteenth century with the first motorcycles around 1900. By 1904, the firm was concentrating on motor cars, resuming motorcycle manufacture in 1910 with a Swiss Motosacoche V-twin. The famous JAP V-twin sidecar outfit joined the range for 1912 and the firm continued the V-twin theme with a new solo for 1913, powered by Enfield’s own engine, racing successfully at Brooklands and the Isle of Man TT. Enfield was by now recognized as a technically advanced factory, adopting multi-speed transmission, chain drive, automatic dry-sump lubrication and a patented cush-drive rear hub that would remain a feature of all future models and was supplied to other manufacturers.

The 500 Bullet in the 1935 catalogue.

The GT 535 with Harris Performance (now part of Royal Enfield’s UK base) frame and styling.

The legendary single-cylinder Bullet was born in 1932 and first displayed at the Olympia Motorcycle Show in London. Radical redesigns in 1936 and 1948 prepared the Bullet for export on a huge scale, with work starting in 1955 on a factory in India that allowed Royal Enfield to survive the collapse of the marque in the UK.

In 1941, Royal Enfield moved some production from Redditch to old underground stone workings in Wiltshire, an abandoned mine for the famous Bath stone. Safely hidden from Nazi bombers, sights for anti-aircraft guns and control equipment for Bofors guns were built, but at the end of the war somehow the factory failed to repatriate to Redditch. Instead, returning to motorcycles, the 248cc Crusader, Meteor and Meteor Minor were built at Bradford-on-Avon until 1963. The Interceptor and Constellation 692 and 736cc twins were also built there until 1970, outliving the Redditch factory’s closure in 1967.

And there Royal Enfield would have ended, another nail in the coffin of the British motorcycle industry. But, pleased with their Enfield singles, the Indian Army and government literally bit the bullet and bought what was left of the business. The legend lived on, initially as cheap and cheerful (or not) reminders of how motorcycles used to be, albeit often falling behind Western expectations of quality and reliability. But in recent years new owners have taken Royal Enfield back to quality and its roots, with a wave of new models including the big twin-cylinder Interceptor and the Continental GT. And, just as importantly, a UK research and development facility has been established – Royal Enfield is coming home.

So this story of Royal Enfield has a lot of ground to cover, from details of the most important models down the years from both UK factories, together with the lifeline and future that is the Indian connection. The experience of owners both in the UK and India will contrast the demands of both markets and the ambition of the new factory that has even hinted at reviving the layout that Royal Enfield was originally famous for – a mighty V-twin. With a history that spans three centuries there’s a lot to pack in.

But first, some thanks. To Richard Stevens, obviously, and as always to Pat Slinn, late of BSA for answering questions. Steve Smith of Avon tyres was a great help, as was Ivar de Gier, famous for his photography collection under the A Herl Inc. banner. And I am especially indebted to Bonhams for photographs, especially James Stensel. With many staff furloughed, James spent an age finding and sending me high-resolution images simply as an act of goodwill. It’s a privilege to work alongside him and the rest of the Bonhams motorcycle team.

TIMELINE

1851 Redditch chosen by George Townsend to set up a business making sewing needles.

1882 Townsend’s son, also George, added bicycle component manufacturing to the company’s product range, including saddles and forks.

1886 Complete bicycles being sold under the Townsend and Ecossais banner.

1891 Townsend suffers financial collapse and by November his bankers settle on Albert Eadie and Bob Walker Smith to take over the business.

1892 Townsend is reborn as the Eadie Manufacturing Company Limited.

1893 Eadie wins a contract to supply precision parts to the Royal Small Arms Factory of Enfield, Middlesex. To celebrate, the company rechristens its undertaking the Enfield Manufacturing Company and launches its first bicycle as the Enfield.

1898 Enfield launches a motorized vehicle known as a Quadricycle built around two robust bicycle frames and powered by a proprietary 1½HP De Dion engine.

1901 The first Royal Enfield motorcycle built.

1907 Eadie Manufacturing, the cycling and firearms business, sold to BSA.

1909 Royal Enfield’s first V-twin, using a Motosacoche engine shown at the Stanley Cycle Show.

1912 First JAP V-twin powered Royal Enfield.

1913 Royal Enfield’s own 350/425cc V-twin is the factory’s first in-house motor.

1919 Enfield-Allday Bullet car shown at the London Motor Show and the 225cc two-stroke single goes on sale.

1923 Designer Ted Pardoe joins Royal Enfield and adds two single-cylinder 350 JAP-powered motorcycles to the range. The result is a total of eight models shown at London’s Olympia Motorcycle Show.

1925 Royal Enfield announces that the JAP engines are to give way to four-stroke singles of Ted Pardoe’s in-house design and Tony Wilson-Jones joins the firm.

1926 Royal Enfield expands the range with a 488cc side-valve model.

1930 Sloper single range announced and saddle tanks replace ‘flat’ tanks.

1932 Model Z Cycar on sale and the first use of the Bullet name on motorcycles.

1939 The baby Royal is shown, a lightweight that would become the wartime Flying Flea.

1941 Bradford-on-Avon factory established in stone quarries.

1948 The 350 Bullet is shown alongside the 500 Twin.

1952 The Bullet is now available as a 500 and the RE 125 becomes the 150 Ensign. Meteor 700 launched and 500 Twin evolves into the Meteor Minor.

1952 Order from the Indian Army for 350 Bullets for border patrol use.

1955 Bullet production starts in India.

1957 The first of the unit-construction 250 singles is shown, the Crusader.

1959 The Ensign is developed into the Prince and the Fury 500 is launched. A performance version of the Meteor is launched as the Constellation.

1962 Major Smith dies and E. & H.P. Smith (no relation) acquire Royal Enfield.

1963 The Series 1 Interceptor is launched.

1964 The 250cc Turbo Twin is almost all new, featuring a Villiers 2-cylinder, two-stroke motor. Geoff Duke joins Royal Enfield.

1965 The Continental GT 250 goes on sale and the GP5 racer is developed.

1967 Redditch works close, all production switched to Bradford-on-Avon.

1968 Series 2 Interceptor available.

1970 Production ceases at Bradford-on-Avon.

1989 Enfield India launches a 500 Bullet intended for export markets.

1994 Eicher group takes control of Enfield India.

1999 New all-alloy motor launched in the Bullet Machismo 350.

2001 Eicher wins the right in UK courts to the Royal Enfield.

2008 Unit construction singles on sale.

2017 The new 650 Royal Enfield Interceptor and Continental GT twins are unveiled.

2018 Concept KX bobber V-twin revealed.

2020 Single only available as a 350.

1

BEGINNINGS

According to Tripadvisor, the third best thing to do in Redditch is to visit the Forge Mill Needle Museum, pushed into the final podium spot behind the Arrow Valley Country Park and the Palace Theatre. Needle production was the genesis of what would become Royal Enfield, making Redditch its almost irresistible home. The town once produced some 90 per cent of the world’s needles and the museum – once a needle factory – brings to life the sometimes gruesome story of needle making in Victorian times. It is also a reminder of how difficult life once was for most working people.

The Forge Mill Needle Museum, Redditch. The only water-powered scouring mill left in the world. AMANDA SLATER

Inside the Forge Mill, giving an insight into factory working conditions at the time. There would only be modest improvement by the time the Redditch factory closed. AMANDA SLATER

The first recorded mention of Redditch – probably simply derived from red ditch, the rubicund clay banks of local water courses and notably the River Arrow – dates from 1348 and the outbreak of the Black Death. During the Middle Ages Redditch became a centre of needle making, with factories powered by watermills. To this inventory was added fish hooks, fishing tackle and almost inevitably springs. The River Arrow also eventually flows into the River Avon, which in turn flows through Stratford-upon-Avon and on to the canal network, so accessing the rest of the country – and indeed the world in the days when waterways were the lifeblood of wealth creation and the British Empire. That there are five River Avons in England alone is simply explained. Avon is from an old Celtic word for river and the Welsh word for river is afon; yes, the River Avons are the River Rivers. The one that terminates at Bristol gave access to the most important port in the world after London. Heading north, the navigable waterways gave access to Liverpool, busy trying to push Bristol from the number two spot.

Little wonder then that Redditch was chosen by George Townsend when he set up a business making sewing needles in 1851. In 1882, his son, another George, added bicycle component manufacturing to the company’s product range, including saddles and forks. By 1886, complete bicycles were being sold under the Townsend and Ecossais banner. Why a needle manufacturer expanded into cycles (meaning bicycles and tricycles, plus even quadricycles with four wheels) might seem odd from our perspective, cycles were one of the few growth areas in the economy when much of the world faced recession.

The UK’s problems were precipitated by the Baring Crisis (also known as the Panic of 1890) and acute recession. Although less serious than some other financial crises of the era, it remains the nineteenth century’s most famous sovereign debt crisis, brought on by the near insolvency of Barings Bank in London due principally to excessive risk-taking on poor investments in Argentina. Strikes in Australia and the United States were forerunners to an 1893 stock-market panic that led to recession in the USA and the Newfoundland Bank Crash of 1894, known then as Black Monday. More strikes and uncertainty followed, but the market for cycles almost alone bucked the trend, a front page of good news when every bulletin seemed to be relentlessly gloomy.

Cycling was revolutionized in August 1885 – the year in which Bianchi, still famous for its bicycles, was founded – when the safety bicycle was invented by John Kemp Starley. Characterized by two wheels of the same size, with a rear wheel driven by pedals below the saddle and a chain, it made for a more efficient bicycle that could use smaller wheels. The name came about because it was far easier to stay aboard than its predecessors, the Penny Farthing especially. The low saddle, with easily reached pedals, allowed a more upright and controllable – so safer – seating position. This layout was quickly adapted to tricycles and quadricycles, and personal transport was born. Before the cycle, the only means of travel were with a horse – an impossible ambition for all but the wealthy and landed gentry – or by walking, where travel to the next town would typically take at least a day. For those who lived in villages or more rural settings, these cycles represented the first chance in history to meet more than the few hundred people who lived nearby.

This is why some have observed that the bicycle was the first ‘Dating App’: a chance to meet prospective partners beyond the handful available locally. In an era when people married very young the window of opportunity to meet a partner was realistically the few years between, say, thirteen or fourteen and one’s early twenties. Inevitably the options would be few even in a larger town and mothers and vicars were seen as the only matchmakers. But bicycles allowed travel to towns in a few hours and there was suddenly the realistic possibility of attending a social gathering several miles away and being able to return to the parental home by nightfall.

A 1902 Royal Enfield Girder model. ONLINE BICYCLE MUSEUM

Bicycles were big business for Royal Enfield, but competition was fierce.

The second bottom frame rail was characteristic of the Royal Enfield Girder model. ONLINE BICYCLE MUSEUM

In 1894, the so-called ‘Betty Bloomers’ became popular. These were effectively lightweight baggy trousers that could be worn under a skirt. Women were no longer limited to tricycles and could ride comfortably in their long skirts, powering the by now booming bicycle market. Demand was boosted further by the invention in 1887 of the pneumatic tyre. John Dunlop, a Scottish vet working with his brother James in Downpatrick, south of Belfast, first made pneumatic tyres for his child’s tricycle before developing them for bicycle racing. He sold his rights for a modest sum, unaware how pivotal his invention would be, his only reward being a sort of immortality as his name remained when the Dunlop Rubber Company was established in 1901.

BANKRUPTCY AND REBIRTH

In economies where nothing seemed to be going well, bicycle or cycle part manufacture was adopted by everybody who had the necessary facilities. Despite this – or perhaps because there was so much competition – Townsend the bicycle and needle-making forerunner of Royal Enfield suffered financial collapse in 1891. By November of that year George Townsend’s bankers settled on Albert Eadie, sales manager of Birmingham’s Perry and Company, pen makers who had also started to make components for cycles, and Robert (known as Bob) Walker Smith, an engineer from D. Rudge and Company, to take over the business. So, in 1892, what would become Royal Enfield was reborn as the Eadie Manufacturing Company Limited, based in Snow Hill, Birmingham.

Despite Townsend being a well-respected needle manufacturer of almost fifty years’ standing with a recent and unhappy adventure into bicycles, Eadie decided to diversify even further and chase government firearms contracts. The demand for guns had collapsed around 1860, driving the nascent Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) factory to near collapse, only saved by switching to bicycle manufacture. The only significant conflict by this time was the American Civil War, the Crimean War having ended in 1856. This would prove the fallibility of building a business’s future around weaponry: there are times in history when wars are thankfully rare, but these are often unpredictable. Royal Enfield, like BSA, would have to find an alternative revenue stream and both would fall upon the same idea: the motorcycle. But before then there was to be a short-lived boom in firearms sales, as advances in rifle design led to a wholesale re-equipping of armies throughout the world.

The first British repeating rifle was developed in 1879. It was adopted as the Magazine Rifle Mark I in 1888 and was commonly referred to as the Lee-Metford. ‘Lee’ was James Paris Lee, a Scottish-born Canadian-American inventor who designed an easy to operate turn bolt and magazine to work with it. ‘Metford’ was William Ellis Metford, an Englishman instrumental in perfecting the smaller .303 calibre – the calibre of a Spitfire’s Browning machine guns. These developments led to the Lee-Enfield repeating rifle that served as the British Empire and Commonwealth’s main firearm during the first half of the twentieth century. It was also the British Army’s standard rifle from its adoption in 1895 until 1957.

Royal Enfield supplied guns and bicycles to the British army. ROYAL ENFIELD

At some time in the early 1880s, suspecting their capacity to build enough guns in-house, the War Office promised the BSA gunsmiths free access to technical drawings and to the War Office’s Board of Ordnance’s Royal Small Arms factory at Enfield – hence Royal Enfield, although its connection to the Redditch factory of the same name was some way off. For now, the ‘Royal Enfield’ factory meant the government-owned facility close to London. New machinery developed in the United States had been installed at Enfield and greatly increased output without needing more skilled craftsmen. The great and the good of Birmingham viewed the expansion of Enfield with suspicion, knowing that the dedicated factory’s proximity to London and long history of producing firearms gave it an advantage over the loose-knit gunsmiths of Birmingham, and so formed ‘The BSA’ to be sure of the capacity to compete.

Throughout the evolution of the British rifle the name Enfield is prevalent, but it originally referred to the Royal Small Arms Factory in the town – now suburb – of Enfield, just to the north-east of London. The British government had produced muskets since 1804 in this factory, but it had nothing like the capacity required to rearm a world desperate for the new Lee-Enfield repeating rifle. The British Empire’s demand for rifles and ammunition rebounded from the 1860s slump to such an extent that eventually BSA abandoned bicycle and tricycle manufacture. The people at the top of BSA were gunsmiths and, in order to free factory floor space to build more Lee-Metford rifles, between 1888 and 1893 they returned BSA to its roots, turning production over entirely to the magazine rifle.

Lee-Metford Mark II .303. ARMÉMUSEUM/SWEDISH ARMY MUSEUM

Albert Eadie and Bob Walker Smith decided that Eadie Manufacturing, based in Redditch just 15 miles (24km) or so south of BSA, decided to seize the opportunity and in 1893 this pair of entrepreneurs, trading under the Eadie banner, duly won a contract to supply precision parts to the Royal Small Arms Factory of Enfield, Middlesex. To celebrate this prestigious and lucrative order, they rechristened their undertaking the Enfield Manufacturing Company and launched their first Bob Walker Smith bicycle as the Enfield. Such was the extent of the estate of factories eventually covered that the Enfield name came to apply to the area rather than just the company. Indeed, even today, long after what became the Royal Enfield factories closed, maps of the region still carry the Enfield name.

QUADRICYCLES ‘MADE LIKE A GUN’

The following year, Eadie bicycles was renamed Royal Enfield and the trademark ‘Made Like A Gun’ was adopted. A motorcycle could not be far away, or so you might imagine. Instead, in 1898, the company launched a Walker Smith-designed motorized vehicle known as a Quadricycle built around two robust bicycle frames and powered by a proprietary 1½HP De Dion engine. The company also finalized its trading name as The Enfield Cycle Company Limited, a name it would use for the following seventy years.

The first powered Royal Enfield, the Quadricycle, basically two bicycles and an engine powered by a French De Dion single-cylinder motor. BONHAMS

Rear view of the Quadricycle. Works manager, Bob Walker Smith, designed the prototype for his own use. Seating the driver over the engine and behind the passenger, it closely followed the lines of the popular De Dion ‘quad’. The single-cylinder motor displaced 244cc and gave a maximum speed of 30mph (48km/h). BONHAMS

In 1900, Royal Enfield entered one of its Quadricycles into the inaugural 1000 Mile Trial, following a tortuous cross-country route from London to Edinburgh and back. The inaugural London to Brighton Run in November 1896 may have been the birth of British motor sport, but by the end of the century there were still relatively few motorized vehicles on the roads, all seemingly owned and driven by apparently very rich people in flamboyant clothing. Indeed, the expression ‘Gordon Bennett!’ originates from the eponymous US publisher and motor-sport fan who sponsored the Gordon Bennett Cup in Europe. Most of the public had never seen a powered vehicle on the road and those who had were extremely shocked and frightened, being deeply suspicious of the bangs and unsilenced roar of the engines, let alone the dust kicked up as these monstrosities moved at great speed amongst the horse-drawn vehicles and pedestrians.

The Automobile Club of Great Britain was established in July 1897 (from 1907 it was known as the Royal Automobile Club, or RAC) to champion the car and the interests of all motorists, but several exhibitions and demonstrations had not gained support for the new mode of transport. And while the rest of the world seemed happy to accept motorcycle and automobile racing on open roads, Britain absolutely prohibited it. The general public disdain for the internal combustion engine was summed up by Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 book, The Wind in the Willows, in which the wicked and feckless Toad obsesses about his motor car. Following the Motor Car Act of 1903, Britain was subject to a blanket 20mph (32km/h) speed limit, despite warnings that the embryonic British motor industry was being stifled at birth. Reliability and performance could not be developed while it remained illegal to go faster than 20mph and at one point the speed limit stood at 8mph (13km/h) in built-up areas and 12mph (19km/h) elsewhere. Thus the ‘British’ Gordon Bennett Cup of 1903 was held in Athy, a market town in County Kildare in the Republic of Ireland, some 50 miles (80km) south-west of Dublin. In gratitude to the Irish, the British team painted its car in a shamrock green livery and created ‘British’ Racing Green. The ban is also the reason that Surrey landowner Hugh Locke King opened Brooklands on 17 June 1907, the first purpose-built motor racing circuit in the world.

Unsurprisingly, given these restrictions the British motor industry did not progress as quickly as the French, Belgian and German equivalents over the next few years. In the summer of 1899, the Automobile Club Secretary, Claude Johnson, conceived the idea of a trial, with a series of daily runs of up to 100 miles (161km) that would test a driver’s patience and skill, but more importantly the design, construction and reliability of the cars. There would also be exhibitions in the main towns along the way, to try to convince the population of the pleasures and reliability of powered transport and so overcome prejudice.

The original 1000 Mile Trial of 1900 started in Grosvenor Place in London and followed a route through Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Derby, Kendal, Carlisle, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham and back to London. There were eighty-three entries originally, although only sixty-five actually made the start. By Edinburgh, fifty-one were still running, but, in the end, only thirty-five vehicles made it back to London. The itinerary ran from 23 April to 12 May and comprised eleven days of driving between 61 and 122 miles (98 and 196km), the final total distance being 1,060 miles (1,706km). There were four hill-climb competitions and an optional speed trial, with various exhibitions along the way.

In the quaint terminology of the time, motoring was referred to as ‘the field of automobilism’, owners and drivers were either ‘automobilists’ or ‘autocarists’ and mechanics were known as ‘mechanicians’. The vehicles were open to the weather and, even if some had a canvas hood, there were no windscreens so that ‘automobilists’ had to be suitably dressed in ‘autocoats’, hats and goggles. The event is still run occasionally today by the Historic Endurance Rallying Organisation (HERO).

The 1000 Mile Trial was a resounding success and, despite the insistence of some drivers on ‘taking liqueurs with lunch’, the only casualties were an unfortunate dog and an ‘unmanageable’ horse. It was an historic moment in the popularization of the car: ‘Quite simply, it put motoring on the map,’ says Ben Cussons, chairman of the Motoring Committee of the Royal Automobile Club. The Royal Enfield Quadricycle was one of the thirty-five finishers and, despite its share of difficulties and breakdowns, was awarded a silver medal. Little wonder that Enfield initially decided its future lay with four wheelers.

THE FIRST ROYAL ENFIELD MOTORCYCLE

Despite the initial commitment to cars, the first Royal Enfield motorcycle was finally built in 1901. Again a design from the pen of Bob Walker Smith aided by Frenchman Jules Gotiet, it had a 1½HP Minerva engine mounted in front of the steering head. Although this meant that the motor was above the front wheel, it was the rear wheel that was driven by a long rawhide belt. Beyond this, little is known – or at least certain – about the motorcycle. Most of the images are drawings and sources claim the Minerva single-cylinder four-stroke motor variously as 150cc, 172cc and even a 239cc upgrade with innovations such as a spray carburettor and battery and coil ignition, attributed to French designer Louis Goviet. Mick Walker’s book, entitled Royal Enfield – The Complete Story (also published by Crowood), perhaps wisely doesn’t even mention the size of the motor.

A motorized Minerva bicycle at Mt Buffalo, Victoria, Australia, probably around 1903/4. ALICE MANFIELD COLLECTION, STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA (GIFT OF ANNE SHANNON, 2003)

Minerva had started out manufacturing bicycles in 1897, before in 1900 expanding into light cars and motorized bicycles. Back then, Belgium was at the forefront of the internal combustion engine’s development, but its head start was destroyed by World War I. The company took its name from the Roman goddess of wisdom and strategy, but she was also the sponsor of arts and – most importantly – trade. The company produced lightweight clip-on engines that mounted below the bicycle front down-tube, specifically for Minerva bicycles but also available in kit form that was suitable for almost any bicycle. The engine drove a belt turning a large gear wheel attached to the side of the rear wheel opposite to the chain. In 1901, the kit engine was a 211cc unit, allowing comfortable cruising at around 20mph (32km/h) and half as much again on full throttle.

Royal Enfield’s first motorcycle, 1901, with a Minerva engine. A HERL INC

In these pioneering days the horsepower rating was not as universal as it is today, where the quoted brake horsepower (bhp) is a measure of an engine’s ability to turn a brake of some sort. While this empirical measurement was available to engineers from the birth of the internal combustion engine, British tax authorities at least insisted on a theoretical calculation based upon the engine’s specification, determined by the RAC in the UK. This equated 1HP as equal to 2sq in (12.9sq cm) of piston area and came to be known as the Treasury Rating. Perhaps even more oddly, manufacturers would list models by this rating rather than give them a name. It was the 1930s before this changed and even the fabulous Coventry Eagle Flying Eight was thus named after its RAC 8HP rating, despite producing around 30bhp.

So while Minerva claimed 1.5HP at 1,500rpm, the motor was rated at 2HP or 2.25HP in the UK. These kits to turn bicycles into powered two-wheelers were exported as far as Australia. Minerva struggled to build on its early success, hampered – hammered even – by two world wars and the Depression, but it was still making Land Rovers under licence for the Belgium Army as late as 1956.

Then, in 1902, Triumph launched its first motorcycle, expanding rapidly from bicycle production with funding from Dunlop tyres. The vehicle was an immediate hit, powered by a single-cylinder four-stroke Minerva engine with automatic inlet valve and battery/coil ignition, clipped to the down tube of a Triumph bicycle frame.

Triumph sold 500 of its Minerva-powered motorcycles in 1903 and started prototyping with British JAP (John Alfred Prestwich) motors for an expanded range. The same year, BSA experimented with a motorcycle with a BSA pattern frame fitted with a Minerva 233cc engine, similar to the contemporary Triumph’s, although BSA would launch its own motorcycle with an engine designed and built in-house. These would be the leading lights of the embryonic British (English, in reality) motorcycle manufacturers, although Royal Enfield initially decided that motor cars would be its future. The motor department was put into a separate subsidiary, Enfield Autocar Company Limited, which was incorporated in 1906 and established in new works at Hunt End, although still in Redditch. However, after just nineteen months Enfield Autocar reported substantial losses and, apart from Albert Eadie himself, shareholders were unwilling to provide more capital.