Royal Enfield twins set for launch

The wait for Royal Enfield's first modern-era middleweight twins is drawing to a close, with the Indian-based manufacturer poised for the international launch of its Interceptor and Continental GT.

Royal Enfield will be hosting international motorcycle media in California from September 22 as it lifts the covers from the final production versions of the middleweight siblings that first broke cover at Italy's 2017 EICMA motorcycle expo.

Bikesales will be there in the thick of it and assessing both machines on some of California's best routes, so keep an eye out for a full review in the near future.

Local pricing and availability will be announced by Royal Enfield's Australian importer and distributor, Urban Moto Imports, closer to the arrival of the models on our shores.

While essentially sharing the same tubular-steel cradle chassis and 648cc parallel-twin engine, the Interceptor is a straight roadster while the Continental GT adopts a café racer style, with clip-on handlebars.

The pair evoke the zeitgeist of models from Royal Enfield's halcyon past. The original Interceptor was an evolution of the many Royal Enfield twins that had gone before it and was in production in the UK from 1960 to 1970.

Meanwhile, the first Continental GT – a 250cc model that was the factory's answer to calls from its younger employees to give them a true café racer with performance and just the essentials – arrived in 1965 with a fibreglass tank, clip-ons and rear-set foot pegs.

The look may be pure retro, but the underlying technology is bang up to date. The 648cc parallel-twin engine sports electronic fuel injection and a single overhead cam format with four valves per cylinder. The 270-degree crank delivers a broad spread of torque and a characterful note, says Royal Enfield, while power is transmitted to the rear wheel via a six-speed gearbox with slipper clutch and chain final drive.

Power is a claimed 47hp at 7000rpm and 53Nm at 4000rpm. The compression ratio is 9.5:1.

The newcomers are a product of intense collaboration between Royal Enfield's design centre in Chennai, India, and its new UK Technical Centre in Bruntingthorpe, in the British Midlands. The latter was opened in 2017, the purpose-built facility boasting an array of cutting-edge technology and over 125 staff.

Royal Enfield is hoping the two new models will appeal not only to existing devotees of the brand but also the wider global retro-bike and indeed mid-capacity market, with Royal Enfield CEO, Siddartha Lal (pictured), previously saying the company was intent on dominating the middleweight motorcycle category.

"Our ambition is to lead and expand the mid-size motorcycle market in the world," he told Bikesales in 2017.

"It might take five years, 10 years, 20 years – it doesn't matter – but we want to lead middleweights across the world in every market."

For a company whose production has increased 16-fold from 50,000 bikes in 2010 to a staggering 800,000 by the end of 2017, that's a battle cry that should be taken seriously – even if the bulk of those sales fell in India's own massive domestic market.

The Interceptor and Continental GT, however, will hold strong appeal for western markets – and so Royal Enfield will have the motorcycling world's attention when it finally thumbs the starter on these new models in California in a few days' time. Watch this space.