VOL. 50 ISSUE 40 OCTOBER 8, 2013
least visually, as the first
step in the plans of Royal
Enfield's parent company
Eicher Motors (the large
Indian commercial vehicle
manufacturer which has
owned RE since 1996) to
transform the world's oldest motorcycle company in
continuous existence into
a global player by investing in a raft of new models.
And this one was the first
– straight out of the new
factory outside Chennai at
Oragadam.
The 49.3-acre new
state-of-the-art facility has
P59
the capacity to allow Eicher to eventually produce
500,000 motorcycles a
year between this and its
venerable old Chennai
plant, and indeed Royal
Enfield is on schedule to
build 175,000 motorcycles
in 2013, says Eicher's
MD/CEO Siddhartha Lal.
That's a big step up from
the 50,000 RE units built
in 2010, but the company
has already begun work on
the second phase of expansion at the new plant,
which will further increase
production capacity to
The retro Royal
Enfield Continental
GT: a modern
tribute to the
historic British
brand's 1965
Continental GT
café racer.
