Oct 08, 2016 11:47 PM
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The Royal Enfield Classic 350 follows the familiar design lines of the timeless Royal Enfield Bullet silhouette – a design and shape that has been a familiar British classic design of the pre-War and post-War era. The styling is in many ways almost identical to the original ‘Bullet’, but the Classic brought it with a little ‘premium –ness’ with brighter colours, split seats and an optional upswept exhaust and new taillight assembly.
For the first time in several years, the Royal Enfield got a makeover, although a subtle one and became attractive and grew beyond the traditional ‘Bullet’ look. The retro looks got a ‘cool’ treatment and the Classic 350(together with the Classic 500) brought in a new breed of Royal Enfield fans.
Engine:
More than looks however, it is also the new Unit Constructionguru30 Engine(UCE) which could be given Cred824it for the Classic 350’s popularity. The same year when the Classic 350 and 500 were launched, the company decided to replace all models in its product range with the new UCE Twinspark engine platform. The advantage over the older engines is that clutch and gearbox in the new mill have been placed in the same unit and it also has lesser moving parts. This, Royal Enfield says, has improved efficiency as well as reliability.
In terms of numbers, the single-cylinder, air cooled, four stroke unit makes 20PS @ 5250rpm and maximum torque of 28Nm at 4000rpm. What the new engine offers is an integrated gearbox(compared to separate gearbox on the old cast iron engines and even the first lot of the AVL-designed engines). But more importantly, it also offered a left-side gear shifter, with a five speed gearbox. This gearbox though was introduced first on the Electra 5S with the cast-iron engine, and was the reason for Royal Enfield’s increasing popularity. Many riders shied away from Royal Enfield bikes up till the ‘90s just because they came with a rather unconventional right hand side gear shifter, a relic of the old post-war British bike design.
