Royal Enfield Meteor 350 – It is less than a week for the official launch of the Royal Enfield Meteor 350 and more details keep emerging on the internet. Now the brand has uploaded an image of the company’s MD, Siddhartha Lal riding the upcoming Royal Enfield Meteor 350 on the open roads. The front of the motorcycle can be clearly seen equipped with a large windscreen which is likely to be an add-on acsessory that will be available through the brand’s latest configurator ‘Make It Yours’. The headlamp of the Meteor 350 is going to get a round shaped LED DRL and one can also notice the new speedometer cluster behind the clear windscreen. The engine and every other mechanical component seems to have a dark theme, finished in black. The levers are machine finished while the rounded rear view mirrors are seen in chrome.
Royal Enfield Meteor 350 – Overview
The brand has also explained the evolution of the Meteor 350. In the 1990s Royal Enfield developed the Lightning 535 which was the most powerful engine in the brand’s portfolio at the time. The cruiser came with American styling and was well received by cruiser aficionados. Following the Lightning 535, Royal Enfield launched the Thunderbird in the year 2002. The Thunderbird claims to be the longest running no.1 cruiser brand in the Indian market and created a new benchmark in the cruiser segment running over two decades. The brand had employed a new lean burn engine with an all-new 5-speed gearbox and for the first time the gear shifter was, blasphemously moved to the left-hand side of the motorcycle. While purists hated this, the brand reveals that the customers who hadn’t previously owned an Enfield received the Thunderbird with open arms. This move also encouraged a different breed of riders to join the Royal Enfield family, widening the horizon of the target audience.
In 2012, the brand updated the Thunderbird with a larger 500cc UCE powertrain with electronic fuel injection and a 20-litre fuel tank evolving the cruiser fans in the Indian market. The final iteration in the Thunderbird brand was the Thunderbird X that was launched in 2018. The ‘TBX,’ as it was known shared the same cruiser DNA but came with a more aggressive and youthful styling. During the BS6 transition in early 2020, the brand finally laid down the Thunderbird marque from the brand’s portfolio.
Royal Enfield is now rekindling the cruiser segment with a new marque christened as the ‘Meteor’, which replaces the Thunderbird in it line-up. The brand also boasts to have thoroughly refined the the upcoming cruiser with a new chassis, suspension, engine character, ergonomics. The Meteor also claims to offer the right amount feedback on both daily commutes as well as leisure rides. Royal Enfield is now gearing up to retain the Best Cruiser title with the all-new highway cruiser, the Meteor 350.
