Royal Enfield Thunderbird: Its looks can cook

Royal Enfield's new Thunderbird 500 rides with style.

Royal Enfield introduced its new Thunderbird 500 motorcycle in India yesterday. It's an immense development there.

In India the Royal Enfield Thunderbird — a highly styled, laid back cruiser based on the Bullet — is a cult vehicle on a par with the Ford Mustang in America.

This new Thunderbird has a ready audience in India, anxious to buy it. In the rest of the world the reaction might be that it doesn't look like enough like a vintage British motorcycle. True.

It's available in three shades of black — none of them British Racing Green.

Here's a short video by Royal Enfield Media that tells you everything you need to know.



The format, pairing Thunderbird designer Siva with an attractive woman interviewer, says much in and of itself. This motorcycle is a fashion statement. "Sarah" looks great on it but, then, she looks pretty good off it, too.

Your results may vary.

One only-in-India note: here is a highly-styled motorcycle for which its designer proudly claims exceptional range.

You may as well demand to know if Sarah can cook. Her culinary skills are of no importance to this video.

Similarly, the Thunderbird's 20-liter fuel tank (more than five gallons), with its offset filler cap, likely contributes more to the attention the motorcycle gets in the city than the distances it will swallow across the subcontinent.

Royal Enfield Thunderbird takes its own road home

Does the new Royal Enfield Thunderbird make you angry?

Royal Enfield's new Thunderbird, for sale now in India, gets the fairest sounding review I've read so far from Aneesh Shivanekar in the Business Standard, out of Mumbai.

Entitled "Angry Bird," it celebrates the Thunderbird as just what many riders in India want while admitting that its feet-forward cruiser styling is not the Brit-bike heritage that others venerate.

Also, it's a better motorcycle in many respects, he writes. It deserves respect, even if digital dash, projector headlamp and standard back rest aren't your favorite flavors.

"It's certainly not beautiful but then, it's not bad looking either, is it?" Shivanekar writes. He recommends improving things by finding the prettiest girl possible for the passenger seat.

Beautiful in their own way are the rear disc brake, improved forks, swingarm and frame. The tank is bigger, so the new Thunderbird can go farther at faster speeds.

"Let's not forget that the Thunderbird's primary role, still, is touring and a lot of changes on this new Thunderbird are tailored to improve that experience," Shivanekar writes.

Not improved over other new Royal Enfields are the motor and transmission, which carry the Thunderbird faster than the previous model but not nearly fast enough to match American cruisers.

Shivanekar judges it fast enough for its home market.

"For a considerable percentage of our buying population, they wouldn't want anything else."