Well, today I saw the new 650 twins and, finally, a couple of Himalayans and also a C5 with cast alloy wheels. There was also a cutaway of the 650 motor. From this, close inspection of the bikes and questioning of a helpful RE (English) rep I gleaned the following: 1. The U.K. will get the first 650 bikes in June 2018. 2. The valve clearances are adjusted by adjuster and locknuts (ie the bike is intended to be home maintenance friendly. 3. Rep couldn’t confirm make of EFI. I had a look at it and the manifold is a single casting with an injector body on each side. The bores look quite small. 4. He told me that the price in the U.K. will be around £5,500 and (hurray!) there will be more powerful versions in due course. I think he’d got the message that actually it would be a really good bike with more oomph and that quite a lot of us were disappointed with the fact that it will only be A2 licence compliant at first ie 47bhp. 5. The U.K. would get them first - a lot of development happened here. 6. The reason for the delay in launching the Himalayan here is interesting. Apparently India has woken up to emissions control. They have introduced their standard B4 to replace B3 (similar to our Euro 3 and 4 but not the same. This led to the need to alter the production line to change the Bullet models to meet the new B4 standard - they are now EFI. That had to be attended to as a matter of priority so Himalayan production was curtailed, at least as far as the superior EFI one’s is concerned which is why Australia got the carb home market ones first. They had a white Himalayan kitted out with alloy panniers etc (think BMW GS), very nice too.
The general consensus of the people I spoke to was one of surprise at how good they looked in the metal (I have to say I think so too, but I’ll still wait for the more potent version). For me, apart from the (lack of) power issue I think they’ve nailed it. The bikes are physically smaller than the oversize Triumph twin like my Thruxton and are much more akin to the size of a sixties English twin. They appear to be of similar weight too. I preferred the cafe racer option to sit on though the single seat looks as daft as it does on the CGT; no doubt a dual seat would transform the looks and practicality. They also had an original Interceptor 2 and 250cc CGT. All-in-all I think they’ll sell by the boatload at that price. They do seem to be better made than the singles, though the Euro 4 ones are obviously the best yet. The rear disc brake looks good and the brake travel is a lot less. For practicality I’d like a cast wheel one.
There were a lot of bikes competing in this area such as Mash, Hero and other Chinese ones that are getting well-established in the UK. They are competitively priced and a quantum leap forward in quality to where they were only a few years ago. Anyone who rubbishes these Chinese makes would do well to remember what happened with the Jap bikes 50 odd years ago...
Topic: 650 twin (Read 41950 times)