Recently I was very lucky to attend the 40th Anniversary Party of the REOC, down in deepest Dorset. Some lovely bikes to look at, and a couple of intersting talks on the Saturday afternoon. one was by Gordon May, who I'm sure most of you have heard of, and was about his trip a few years ago, from England to the RE factory at Chennai in India.
However, the other talk was by an English fella in his thirties, who is one of the RE designers at their new design facility, at Bruntingthorpe airfield in Leicestershire. It has recently opened, and employs around a hundred people, I think, and they also have the team at Harris Performance which RE bought over a couple of years back. Some of the figures concerning RE are staggering. Not too many years ago, Chennai was producing 25000 bikes a year. in the last year they produced 670000 bikes, and aim to produce one million bikes per year by 2020! Their growth is staggering, with further manufacturing plants being built, and the latest modern equipment installed in the existing plants. So who buys all these Enfields? Well, the main market is young males in India, but they are expanding into other territories all the time. A RE in India isn't the cheapest bike, but is reasonably affordable. RE aren't in the vast 125cc basic transport market, which is dominated by firms such as Hiro, and don't aim to be. Nor are they interested in getting into the high performance sector. Sadatha Lal, the CEO, recently visited Ducati, which is up for sale, but I was assured he isn't interested in buying them out, as RE have more than enough to be getting on with.
They have quite a few things in the pipeline, so aren't standing still, but all he would divulge, is that their new big twin will be launched in Milan later this year, and will be in UK dealers by next March.
Another interesting point is that India is very soon bringing in very strict emissions laws, which for a while will be the most stringent on the planet! So their future bikes will easily meet EU/UK regs.
Finally, what a great bunch of people the REOC are. Very friendly with some great characters. There were over 150 of us eating on the Saturday night, including some of the Greek branch who'd flown over specially.
Anyway, here's a pic of me on the guys Himilaya, what he road down in the rain from Leicester, and then road home again that evening in the rain and fog, and a rather fancy cake
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