रॉयल एन्फिल्ड - चौकशी

पित असाल तर एकदा २-३ पेग झ्याल्यावर विचार करा. एकावे जनाचे करावे मनाचे.

मी गेल्या ५ वर्षांपासून बुलेट वापरतोय. पहिल्यांदाच एक गोष्ट स्पष्ट करतो की अस्सल बुलेट प्रेमीसाठी बुलेट म्हणजे जुनी standard ३ ५ ०. लोखंडी इंजिन असणारी. तीच बुलेट. बाकी सगळ्या नुसत्या बाइक. नवीन रॉयल एन्फिल्ड तर होपलेस आहेत. आता खालचं आर्टिकल वाचा. एवढ्या चांगल्या शब्दात दुसरा कोणी सांगू नाही शकणार बुलेट काय आहे ते! What’s bigger than the Bullet? - Swami Ashwinananda Friday, November 07, 2003 Seemingly innocent question, teenaged boy on a bicycle, small dusty village on NH 45. And considering I was on an RE 500, I smiled confidently and replied ‘nothing else in the country’! Little did I know I was being set up to be knocked down. The young chap had been strolling around my bike as I enjoyed the customary ‘chai’ at a local tea shop, his casual air of disinterest thinly concealing the gleam of admiration in his eyes. My answer was met with a disdainful smirk. ‘I saw a foreigner on a Yamaha last week. That was much bigger. He told me they’re going to make it in India. 1200 cc, and it was sooo (he stretched his arms out as far as they would go) big. When I'm old enough, that’s what I’m going to ride’. He gave my bike one last look out of the corner of his eye, then pedaled away nonchalantly on his creaky bicycle. Many kilometers down the road, and alone with my thoughts on the highway, I pondered his question. It was the classic mental pivot. Both ridiculously simplistic and unbelievably deep at the same time. ‘What’s bigger than the Bullet?’ In the old days, people bought a Bullet not because of displacement, size or weight, but for very different reasons. It was the ‘Raja Gadi’. The choice of real men. At least that was the picture Bullet advertising painted then, and a vivid and colourful picture it was, best viewed with the ‘Bullet meri jaan’ jingle playing in your head. Then about 15 years ago, the Jap Bike wars started. First there were the hundreds, then later the one-tens, the one-fifties, the one-seventy-fives… each claiming to deliver more power and ‘better mileage’, if that’s even possible at the same time, than the other. Buzz boxes abounded, tiddlers screamed manically on every street, and on another road far from where these marketing, R&D and advertising wars were being fought, the Grand Daddy of them all chugged steadily towards the brink of oblivion. Recently though, there seems to be have been a revival of sorts, at first glance, rather heartening to a die-hard British motorcycle enthusiast like me. It seems as though more people are waking up from their Jap drone-induced stupor, and noticing that there was always a bike that was ‘bigger’ than the plastic clad Jappos available in the country. Suddenly, one sees many young, macho, iron pumping, testosterone charged, leather clad gentlemen on Bullets. Not just the new-fangled ones, but some even on bikes a tad older than they are. Heartened by this turn of events, I accosted one recently, and asked him why he had chosen to ride a Bullet. My eager curiosity was met by a flat and fake-accented answer. ‘Who wants to buy a 180 cc when there’s a 535 cc available maan. It’s the biggest bike in India!’ I smiled thinly, shook his hand, and walked away thinking to myself ‘maybe the Bullet did manage to stop before it got all the way to oblivion. But it’s probably just standing there teetering at the brink.’ There’s a reason for my pessimism. Viewed from the cubic capacity perspective, the BHP perspective, the wheelbase and weight perspective, the ‘sheer size’ perspective or the advertising budget perspective, there will soon be many, many contenders to the position of Biggest Motorcycle in India. Which means that our testosterone-charged gentleman would buy one of them the moment it shows up on the market (attractively priced I might add). Just as soon, I presume, as he’d use an opportunity to take his shirt off and flex his tattooed muscles. People today seem to be buying the Bullet for reasons like machismo (pun unintended), attitude, power and freedom. All the wrong reasons if you ask me. Because they’re all easily re-created, duplicated, and maybe even outdone by competition. Just like the 100cc Japs stopped the Bullet in its tracks 15 years ago, we’ll soon have 250, 350 and maybe even 750 and 1200cc Japs shooting the Bullet down again with weapons like cubic capacity, cruiser styling, fatter tyres, more chrome, and more jeans-leather-and-scantily-clad-women advertising --- all of which are in vogue now. So what is it that will keep the Bullet competitive through the waves of onslaught from bikes that cater to the changing fancies of fickle Indian motorcyclists? What does the Bullet have going for it that no other manufacturer can hope to match no matter how much money he spends on research, development, space-age materials and nubile models? I think the answer can be summed up in one word. Character. To me, the Bullet stands for simplicity. A design that worked well not because it changed to incorporate every new discovery at NASA, but because the folks that designed it 50 years ago got everything right the first time. And then didn’t try to fix things that weren’t broke. It’s a bike that has built a reputation for being reliable, simple to work with, comfortable to be with, and lasts a whole lifetime… which is definitely a whole lifetime longer than the Japs, who outdate their throwaway models before one has even paid the second EMI. The most interesting thing is that over the years, this unglamorous but truly solid reputation has rubbed off on people that ride the Bullet too. The result, when one looks closely, is a bond between an individual and his Bullet, where one is but the mirror of the other. To some folks like me who’ve wanted a Bullet since we were kids, it was the persona of these people that inspired the choice of a motorcycle more than the intrinsic value of the motorcycle itself. They were simple people, responsible people, strong people (not just in body) and they were people you could trust and rely on. I for one just bought into the quiet pride, solidity and soft spoken yet powerful image of Bullet riders I saw as a child, only to realize much later that these were the qualities of the bike itself. In this day where people are realizing it’s better to step back from technology and glamour sometimes and fly subsonic rather than supersonic, I hope that people soon learn to appreciate and aspire to own the Bullet for what it is. A piece of machinery that has lived, served, rewarded and stood by its owners long enough to develop a character of its own. A motorcycle that has reached that point in evolution where its value cannot be measured in cubic centimeters, kilometres per hour or pounds per square inch. And a brand that speaks volumes for its owner for a lifetime… always saying just the same old good things. If I had encountered my cyclist friend on the way back, I would have stopped him on his creaky bicycle and given him the answer I should have given him in the first place. There’s just one thing that’s bigger than the Bullet. It’s the pride of owning one. ================================================== ================================================== === Eliminator will get eliminated by a bigger, faster, Eliminator. A new Terminator will overcome the pulse of the Pulsar. The Shogun will be overshadowed by the Ronin, the RX 135 by the ZXR, and so on. But the Bullet will remain Bullet. For it is not a reality. It is a dream. Dreams are of many types – pleasant, painful, enjoyable, scary, exciting, new, old and many more. Bullet is all this and much more! It is the closest any bike comes to being all things to all people. Being all things to all people is impossible. A theory. That is what Bullet is. A theory. And people love theories. All people love theories. Especially if they sound so good. And nobody can deny (even my 100 year old grandmother does not deny) that no other bike in the world sounds like Bullet.

The article above is a hollow emotional piece – The biggest and only weapon of Bullet owners. Unfortunately, they can’t discuss things like reliability, ease of maintenance, riding comfort, build quality, etc. that come naturally to other modern bikes. They are left with the most un-arguable answer – CHARACTER. Ha ha. The article is full of claims only a Bullet rider can make and only other Bullet riders will nod at in agreement. Insane amount of vibrations, perpetually leaking head, having to remove entire wheel assembly to fix a puncture, etc. are not the signs of ‘the folks that designed it 50 years ago got everything right the first time’. No sir. They didn’t. And even the Royal Enfield never made any efforts to improve them as the steady demand from the government kept registers ringing. (Just like the Ambassador) And if they had got it right in the first place, so right that they did not need to change anything for 50 years, why the hell change anything now? Why alter things that gave bullet it’s oh so great character? And if you are so wary of using models in advertising, why the hell have Milind Soman pose on your bike in your ads? I am sure the answer to all the above question is the same to every question thrown at a Bullet – CHARACTER. But my dear friendly Bullet riders, Bullet is not more a Bullet. Read this : The ‘new’ bullet now has reduced thump, left side gear shift, twin sparks (Holy cow!), gas charged suspension, electronic fuel injection and the greatest killer of all ELECTRIC START! Now a bullet is as much a modern Jap bike as any other, minus the 50 year old look. The very things that gave bullet it’s so called CHARACTER are missing from the ‘new’ Bullet. What a pity, RE has itself killed the character of Bullet. To sum it up: Old Bullet was a pathetic bike with a character. New bullet is just a pathetic bike. Regards, Adi Joshi

इतकी सगळी मस्त चर्चा चालली आहे,पण अजुन Yezdi बद्धल कोणी कसे बोलले नाही ? ;)

आमचं पहिलं प्रेम यामाहा (३५०,१३५,१००) आणि दुसरं प्रेम रोडकिंग आणि जावा :)