It makes perfect sense to me that Royal Enfield might explore this Scrambler/Enduro/Trials angle as almost a matter of asserting the Heritage of their traditional Bullet line, what with their new Twins and Himalayan getting all the press lately. After all, the reason the vast majority of us even
have an Enfield of any type is because the young Indian Government happened to be shopping around for a rugged reliable bike for all terrains and challenging or non-existent roads for its new Army at just exactly the time when Royal Enfield's newly-redesigned Bullet was dominating the Trials and Enduro circuits and making a name for itself there. Remember: The '48 Bullet, coming out the same year that India got its Independence, was the first British production bike with a rear swing arm, and that gave it a HUGE advantage over other marques through the same sort of mixed terrain and lousy or just "notional" roads found near India's borders back then (or even now).
Thanks to the good folks over in Wales at
Speedtracktales.com, you can read their transcription of a 1953 booklet first published by the original Royal Enfield Company in Redditch, England titled,
Internationally Famous: Royal Enfield at the ISDT 1948-1953. The "ISDT" stands of course for "International Six Days Trial," which is currently known as
The International Six Days Enduro (ISDE), and is widely acknowledged to be just about the most grueling competitive test of reliability, endurance and speed there could be for motorcycles over roads, often poor ones, and mixed terrain. The facts in this booklet may well have gone some way towards convincing a young Indian Government with its own poor or nonexistent roads in many of its border areas to hitch its wagon to the Royal Enfield Bullet. Perhaps today's Royal Enfield in Chennai, India is just getting around to acknowledging its own muddy hardscrabble "retro roots."