CARBERRY DOUBLE BARREL V2 ROAD TEST: PAUL C'S PLAN B
Last November’s global debut of Royal Enfield’s new 650cc parallel-twins at the Milan Show opened a fresh chapter in the brand’s 117-year long history, which began in Britain in 1901. But since 1955 the Royal Enfield empire has migrated to India. For the first time since its UK factory closed in 1970, Royal Enfield is now manufacturing twin-cylinder motorcycles as part of the Indian firm’s attempt to corner a serious slice of the middleweight 250-750cc global marketplace.
Previously, its entire production – it made 825,000 bikes in 2017, 96% of them destined for buyers in its home market – were ohv pushrod singles. But now, it’s intended that its all-new single-ohc twins will propel the Indian brand to becoming a true world player. “What we’re trying to accomplish, in our own bumbling and gentle way, is world domination [of that middleweight segment]!” says Royal Enfield’s dynamic CEO Siddhartha Lal. And as well as being unduly modest, he’s not entirely joking…..
But at the other end of the scale in terms of volume and longevity is Dream Engine Manufacturers (DEM), a recently-established small-scale manufacturing operation located in Bhilai, an industrial city on the plains of Chhattisgarh state in central India, which is offering its customers a different interpretation of how an Enfield-based multi-cylinder motorcycle should be. For its Carberry Double Barrel V2 is powered by a 998cc 55º V-twin engine first conceived in Australia 15 years ago, which essentially comprises two Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet cylinders and heads on a specially designed crankcase incorporating a stock Enfield five-speed transmission, wrapped in a dedicated twin-shock classic-styled frame package.
As such, it represents Plan B as an alternative way of building a twin-cylinder Royal Enfield, and it comes as no surprise that the astute Siddhartha Lal not only purchased an earlier version of the bike for his engineers at RE to assess, but has also kept close tabs on the Carberry operation, to the extent of agreeing to furnish DEM with the necessary stock Royal Enfield components to construct the Double Barrel engine and frame. Just in case, you see….
