Royal Enfield to launch India''s first Euro 3 engine in UK

Venkatachari Jagannathan
06 June 2007

The Rs198-crore turnover division ships to UK annually around 1,000 vehicles. The division sells three models — Bullet Electra, Bullet Sixty-5 and Euro Classic — fitted with 500cc engines.

While CEO R L Ravichandran refused to confirm or deny the development, sources say that the new integrated engine with electronic fuel injection (EFI) is in the advanced stage of testing and launch. The new engine will replace the existing one in the models that are currently sold in the UK.

Last year, Royal Enfield exported around 3,300 units and the target for the current fiscal is around 4,000. Apart from the UK, Royal Enfield exports to the US (Electra X, Bullet Classic, Bullet Deluxe and Bullet Military), Germany, France, Australia, Italy, Hungary, Japan and others.

While that is for the overseas market, for the domestic market Royal Enfield is testing a new 350cc aluminum twin-spark integrated engine to be fitted in its sporty model Thunderbird.

Code named TBTS (Thunderbird Twin Spark) engine, Royal Enfield is expected to launch a model fitted with this engine sometime later this year. Presently Thunderbird model is powered by a lean-burn engine. And based on the customer response the division would decide whether to have two engine variants or phase out the existing one.

Incidentally, the integrated engine or unit construction engine is expected to slightly reduce the metal cost for Royal Enfield.