HEAVEN AT HITCHCOCKS
Imagine choosing your next project from a specialist dealer then wandering his shop, picking all the parts you desire to build it. sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?
Own a classic Royal Enfield? There’s nowhere else you need to go. The place is amazing...
Well of course it’s a dream; stuff like that doesn’t happen in real life... But I thought such a fantasy scenario might be a good way to test out just how complete Hitchcocks' parts coverage is for any given Royal Enfield model, because it just ain’t like the old days; it’s actually much better. When I started motorcycling, the British industry was largely gone but not forgotten; the big dealers, where British chrome had once gleamed under the showroom lights, had moved with the times, selling their redundant stock to greasy-denim young entrepreneurs trading from railway arches and backstreet dives. That’s where I bought my parts. But it was a finite supply and as the saleable stock depleted, most of those shops sold out to more determined rivals and it became necessary to search further afield. I dreamed of going back in time to when those big dealers seen in old magazines were there to supply anything you wanted... Since then, something strange has happened. Rather than the parts supply drying up completely, a few of those more determined young businessmen continued to accumulate, streamlining their business by concentrating on one make. Actively pursuing yet more redundant stock, while re-manufacturing unobtainable items, they have become far bigger than any of those old dealerships, with a quantity of stock perhaps second only to the factory. In this case we’re talking about Allan Hitchcock who, almost by chance as a young bike breaker trading in current Japanese parts, bought a bargain lorry-load of stock for something called a ‘Royal
Enfield’. Instead of just selling off the stock and pocketing the cash, Allan had the business sense to see a bigger picture. By cornering the market in the Redditch classics, he has rationalised the parts situation so that instead of ringing round a list of dealers, getting one item from here, another from there, today if Allan hasn’t got it, you can safely assume that nobody has – and if he gets enough requests he will consider making them. Monopoly? Well maybe, but we’re not talking greedy executives and hungry shareholders here, just a family business with enough clout to take chances few could afford in order to manufacture the parts we all need. Hitchcock’s premises is large and very well organised but there’s nowhere that isn’t stuffed with Royal Enfield parts, old or new. “We generally send out 500-550 parcels a week,” says Allan, “It’ll be 250 today alone, though, because it’s been a Bank Holiday...” I’m staggered. “So,” I venture. “Do you think you could build complete bikes just from the parts you have here?” Allan groans. “We have a very good customer doing just that at the moment. I strongly advised against it but he was determined to start with a frame and go from there, getting all the parts from us. I hate to think what it’s costing him – way more than if he just bought a complete bike – but he’s nearly there now. Truth is, he enjoys the challenge, and for a lot of people, building a bike is as enjoyable as riding.” Well, after all, Airfix didn’t make their fortune selling complete toy aeroplanes... It looks like Hitchcocks are up to my challenge; the next thing is to choose one of their projects for sale and see how much they can supply for it in-house. In the showroom I notice there are more projects than complete bikes. “Yes,”admits Allan. “To be honest, I prefer selling projects to restored bikes. With a project, what you see is what you get; the customer expects to carry out a full engine rebuild or whatever and if it turns out better than he thought, he’s delighted. Restored bikes can be the opposite; you’re relying on someone else’s workmanship and we don’t like disappointing our customers with work we haven’t done ourselves. “We’re moving away from doing customer restoration work – it’s too timeconsuming. If I sell a project, the buyer takes it away on a trailer. Sell a restored bike and it has to be checked in the workshop… Then maybe we find a problem and it turns into a rebuild and any profit turns into a loss. Besides, and sorry if this sounds calculating, if I sell a project the customer will probably be back for parts; if he buys a restored bike I may not see him again. We are trying to make a living here!” Obviously, original factory stock is dwindling; where does the rest come from? Again Allan’s brow furrows. “Y’know, we had someone post on our forum that ‘most of Hitchcocks' parts come from India’. So I decided to find out; in fact 17% of our parts stock is Indian-made – and that’s bearing in mind that we stock spares for Indian-made Enfields! “Quality isn’t the problem with Indian repro parts, so much as consistency – and the same applies to Uk-made parts. You’ll get five batches, all fine, but maybe the sixth will be sub-standard. Then you have to decide if it‘s easier to put the problems right in our workshop or try another supplier and start again.” There’s nothing new in this; we expect parts for a modern vehicle to fit perfectly but it wasn’t always so. “A while back, we sold a set of our Interceptor pipes to a customer who brought them back, complaining they didn’t fit. We tried them on one of our bikes and they were fine – but double-checking on a second bike, we had the same problem. These bikes were more or less hand-built, no two were identical. It was the fitter's job to sort through a pile of exhausts and find the ones that fitted each bike – former Enfield staff have told me there were a lot of rubber hammers and crowbars used at the factory.” Well, I hear all this, but I’m not here to make Allan’s life easy. Time to head into the showroom and take a proper look at all the tempting projects on offer, talk to Allan about those that catch my eye, and decide which bike to base our dream on. I'm tempted to make my choice a tricky one...