Royal Enfield. Did You Know?

Royal Enfield, the only motorcycle brand to span three centuries and still going, is a brand with a lot of interesting stories.

One of them that is not frequently mentioned is that in the 60’s a certain Leo Davenport convinced racing champion Geoff Duke to work for the company, with the collaboration resulting of the GP 5 Racer. In 1964, Duke also convinced Royal Enfield to build a low-priced front drive car using a Daimler-Puch engine (like this one seen on a Haflinger).

It could have happened but it never did because the collaboration ended as Royal Enfield faced an onslaught of better engineered motorcycles by Japanese manufacturers, precipitating the closure of its factory in 1967.

2 Responses to “Royal Enfield. Did You Know?”


  1. 1 Delski Jun 7th, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    Japanese are hard to beat when it comes to machines

    they have quality control down to a art form

  2. 2 Joe Jun 13th, 2011 at 9:10 am

    The Japanese learned many of their advanced quality management techniques from the US, courtesy of Douglas MacArthur and the statistics/quality assurance consultants he brought over to Japan after WW II.

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Cyril Huze