Hi everybody it's Moto Royali the date is Saturday January 19
2019 the literal calm before the storm because a blizzard is coming and will be
here in oh about the next two hours or so even the buses have tire chains on them
already good policy I approve but anyway I'm not here to talk about the weather
I'm here to talk about those brand spankin new shiny and beautiful royal
enfield parallel 650 twins that everyone's been ranting and raving about
they're already in the India market I think they've just arrived in the UK
they're not quite here in America yet and I'm sure that when they finally show
up we'll all be hearing about it the real question though is when those
motorcycles finally reach the good old US of A will they actually sell I'm not
a motorcycle economist or whatever those people are called I really don't even
know too much about the motorcycle market in general but let's toss out a
couple things here if you've seen any of the Royal Enfield advertisements about
the two parallel 650 twins you know that there's this California 1960s cool vibe
that royal enfield is trying to market and sell already that speaks to a
certain audience that's probably not in the market for let's say Kawasaki or
Yamaha or a ninja whatever or even really in the market for let's say a
Honda Rebel 500 or Harley Street 500 or Harley 750 the appearance of the bike
the styling of it already telegraphs the like I said 1960s so
we're probably working from a visual standpoint at something
let's say like a triumph and the interesting thing about that is if we're
looking at parallel twins that are brand new with that vintage styling I'm
thinking that the triumph t100 t120 type motorcycles cost a couple thousand
dollars more than the price that royal enfield intends to sell the parallel 650
twins for so I think the intended price for both of those motorcycles is six
thousand dollars or so and the triumph Motorcycles cost a lot more even at the
lowest level so from that perspective it seems like these motorcycles could be
big sellers to that market niche that wants a vintage 1960s type motorcycle
that's not necessarily a thumper the real question is can royal enfield
actually pull it off it appears that there's enough market size to make it
possible but it's really about the execution so I've talked a little bit in
the past about the size of the dealer network in the United States of America
and the accessibility of Royal Enfield motorcycles and I've also talked about
royal Enfield's challenges with quality control and quality assurance and I
think that's really where the market is going to shake out it's not in the fancy
advertisements which sure build up a lot of popularity it's really in whether
royal enfield can support these productions and have them grow to what
royal enfield hopes for them to be because it's clear to me that royal
enfield wants this motorcycle to be its grand introduction in this crunch
it's an extension from a very highly niche market with a classic 500 it's a
totally different motorcycle than the 650 twins and by royal Enfield's own
admission that it's highway ready quote-unquote highway ready people have
talked about the smoothness of the parallel twin engine versus the classic
500 single cylinder it's clear to me that royal enfield wants this to be a
quote-unquote mainstream American bike for the company but it's it's going to
come down to the execution the service support the dealer network and the
quality assurance and quality control in their production line because as I said
in one of my earlier videos when my Royal Enfield broke after one day it
really it wasn't a huge disappointment to me because I look at that as a
vintage motorcycle that is going to have its British quirks to it but I don't
think the broader market that's not part of that culture is going to forgive
royal Enfield's quality control and quality assurance mistakes if those
still exist and the parallel twins so that's what I
think it's going to be about it's not the specs of the bike it's not the great
looks it's not the smoothness of the engine and that the sixth gear and the
highway speeds it's it's that service is the production quality is the
maintenance it's it's the relationship between the company and the customer and
the way it values or doesn't value people right from the beginning with the
production of the bike itself all the way through service maintenance and
and so on so I thought this video was interesting learn something from it or
got some opinions about it hit that like button hit the subscribe button leave a
comment and until next time here's Moto Royali signing off
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