The name Harris Performance will definitely sound familiar to motorcycle enthusiasts. They are the company that designed the chassis on the Continental GT. A chassis from Royal Enfield that finally could be used in the same sentence with the words agile, sporty and good handling. Harris Performance, a company that is about 40 years old has a history of developing motorcycles for the grand prix and superbike championships for manufacturers like Yamaha and Suzuki. This buyoff means that, Royal Enfield now has access to all the technical expertise of the company, every single development that the company has ever made and technology that is currently way beyond what it currently has. All this along with the current staff will be directly moved to the company’s upcoming UK Tech Centre. Royal Enfield already has two entirely new models in the pipeline as confirmed by the company couple of weeks back. These will be in the engine capacity of 250 cc to 750 cc. There is lot of talk of one of these being a 410cc engine that will be seen on the upcoming motorcycle called the ‘Himalayan’. Other possibility is that of a parallel twin, with a capacity upwards of 600cc. Close friends at the company say, there is also ‘light’ 250 – 300cc motorcycle in the making which could be priced much more competitively and closer to the 1 lakh price tag. But almost everybody we contact refuse to give concrete details on what models are in the pipeline.
With the company doing extremely well in the recent few years, the spur in activity, be it new models or acquisitions surely is a welcome move. The company also has expanded their manufacturing capacity with new plants. We certainly hope to see the new range of motorcycles from Royal Enfield very soon. At the same time we sure do hope they raise their build quality a notch or two.
