FROM THE FRONT

My first ride on the new Royal Enfield twin – which you can read about further on – was one of those rides to which the thoughts keep returning. Not simply because I enjoyed my time out on local familiar roads – although I certainly did that – but because it offers a sortof perspective to the other 650 twin which has been taking up so much time over what seems like years. It is years, in fact! Blimey, so forth.

Two thoughts were endlessly rattling around in the grey porridge I fondly refer to as my brain. First, I wondered why I would ever want more from a motorcycle than the Interceptor offers. And secondly and a little more alarmingly, I wondered why I would somehow be OK when I end up spending about the same amount of money as a new RE would cost on rebuilding a BSA 650 twin. A BSA which will be worth rather less than, say, a six month-old RE in, say, six months’time.

The stock answer to the first question is that I don’t commute any more, which means that I don’t ride every day, and can therefore indulge in bikes which are, shall we say, eccentric. This carefully ignores the fact that when I did commute – at one point a 100-miles each way trip – I almost always rode eccentric bikes (ranging from my own rotating Nortons to gems like Moto Guzzi’s splendid Centauro), and revelled in that very eccentricity. How times change! These days my riding tends to be on completely conventional and unsophisticated machines – which is in fact one of the Interceptor’s biggest appeals. Time do change indeed.

The second of the two deep thoughts, the one involving the relative costs of, say, our own BSA and, say, a nice new RE 650 with a warranty, is more difficult to answer. Because it’s impossible to accept the logic – the logic which insists that only a daft person would spend enough money in so far vain attempts to fix a fairly unremarkable machine when the same amount of money would provide a new one. And … it was ever thus. There’s nothing even faintly logical about choosing to ride a motorcycle anyway. It’s an emotional thing; a passion thing; a challenge. Well … it should be.

This issue also features another new 650 – although there was no riding involved in this story. At least, not by me. Norton’s incoming pair of 650 twins is about as far from the RE models as it’s possible to be. We talked long and hard at RCHQ about whether we should run the story – given that the new Nortons may not be the kind of machine which will appeal to you, gentle reader. But the story’s fascinating, an insight into the curious world of modern small-scale motorcycle manufacture – British motorcycle manufacture too, not simply British assembly of bikes largely manufactured overseas. I wish them well, although I doubt I’ll ever ride one – my stumpy legs would struggle with the seat height on both of the new Nortons.

Unlike the Interceptor. Ever since that first ride, I have wanted to repeat the experience. This is unusual – I’m usually happy to return to my own bike for the ride home and indeed spend the ride back comparing a bike I know well – my own – with the test victim. But… my thoughts do keep returning to the Interceptor. It’s such a logical machine, so simple and uncomplicated. So … sensible. And that’s a worry…

Ride safely