BUILDING BLOCKS

Harley-Davidson takes us on a tour of the Hero Motocorp garden factory plant in Neemrana 

- Keshav Teiva Poumai 

It is not often that we get to see the inner workings of an automotive manufacturing unit, and manufacturers are generally very secretive about what happens on the assembly line. HarleyDavidson was game enough to take us all the way to the Hero Motocorp Neemrana plant in Rajasthan to give us an insight as to what goes into making a Harley-Davidson for India, in India.

Known by the moniker ‘garden factory’, it was established in 2014, adhering to the strictest ecological standards and founded on the fundamentals of sustainable development. Situated in the northeastern region of Rajasthan, Neemrana, the factory occupies a total area of 47 acres and offers both direct and indirect employment opportunities in the area. It also boasts 20 to 30 per cent gender diversity across various sections of the facility.

We were given the option of riding the new Harley-Davidson X440 from Sohna to the garden factory, and that is just what we did. The ride consisted of long stretches of straight highways, a few winding roads, lush green fields on both sides for most of the way and short stints of crowded town roads in between. The X440 navigated comfortably through it all. It managed to keep a good three-figure pace along the straight sections while dipping into corners so confidently that the pegs scraped through almost every turn.