And to realize we in the west are not the only lovers of motorcycles.
We in the "West" have less interest in motorcycles then most any place else in the world. The rest of the world was raised on motorcycles, where in the US they have always been toys because of our economy. We have always essentially been able to afford cars and gas has always been cheap. We didn't have to go through the motorcycle phase like most of the rest of the world did out of necessity. People in Europe and Asia just couldn't afford cars.
As for Enfields going out of production, they didn't just triple, or so, their production facilities so they could stop building them. They did it to keep up with the demand for the bikes in India. They're used to having an 8 month waiting list on orders for them. They sell more bikes in a day there than they sell in the US in a year. You guys can't believe what an insignificant blip we are in their business plan. We should be extremely thankful to have Kevin having the courage to take on this brand.
Hopefully, they'll get a lot more popular here, but it's going to take awhile to change the People's paradigms as to what a motorcycle even is, or how to buy one. They either want a Harley just because it's a Harley and not really having any idea about that it is, or they look at the magazines to see who had the most horsepower, and the highest speed and lowest ET. At any rate whatever the specs are is really going outgun a Royal Enfield or even a Moto Guzzi V7 Racer! I doubt that Yamaha will be bringing in the SR400 very long, it won't sell many with no Electric Starter. That killed the SRX6 back in the '80s.
All these touring companies that go up the Himalayas on 350 Bullets aren't likely to change over to an 800 pound Harley to go there. The Bullets are the perfect bike for those trips!
Bare