SWISS motorcycle engineer Fritz Egli, now 83, is an icon of café racer style and performance. Creator of the legendary Egli-Vincent V-twin from the mid-1960s, he also built race and street specials around Vincent singles and all manner of hot rod Japanese engines, including Yamaha TZ750s, turbocharged Kawasakis and V-Maxes. And then there is his Egli-Enfield 624 Café Racer, which debuted at the IFMA Cologne Show in 1996.
“IT MAKES 47.5HP AT 5100RPM, ABOUT THE SAME AS A GOOD G50 MATCHLESS”
Yes, that's right, Enfield as in Royal. Egli’s first bike was an Enfield and he became Swiss distributor of the marque in 1992, also signing on as an engineering consultant (see breakout box). “I designed this bike for the Royal Enfield factory in India under my consultancy agreement with them, as the proposed basis for a new production model,” Fritz explained to me when I visited the Egli factory in Bettwil, a little village high on a hill above Lake Zurich, in 1999. “The frame is not onlythe complete design, including the necessary jigs to manufacture it. But nothing has come of that. It’s a pity!”
