500 SHADES OF GREY

Two rare half-liter Royal Enfields to ignite yet more hopeful idealism

- Kartik Ware

People always say that we should learn from the past. Perhaps no other motorcycle manufacturer embodies that axiom as deeply as Royal Enfield. And it seems all the more relevant to me when I think of a number bouncing around in the past, both distant and recent - 500. It's quite the impeccable number, halfway between zero and 100, and yet it doesn't feel like a waypoint like other numbers on the side of a motorcycle. If The Proclaimers had threatened to walk 450 or 650 miles, it just wouldn't be the same, would it? And that's what led me to the two motorcycles you see here, the Bullet 500 and the 500 Twin.

Now, these motorcycles' shapes will be familiar to Indian eyes, but other than the rounded-off displacement figure these motorcycles have nothing in common except that whimsical Albion gearbox and their owner, Shivdutt Halady, whom I can easily call one of the biggest RE nuts I've ever met. The cast-iron Bullet 500 started simply as an Enfield, and was made in India from 1989 till the mid-2000s, eventually making way for the 500 LB. Meanwhile, the 500 Twin was born in Redditch with the Royal' in its name and lived from 1948 to 1958 before going on to turn into the Meteor Minor which later led to the stupendous Redditch twins. At the time, many people thought that its straightforward name was rather unremarkable, which probably swung the folks at Redditch towards the majestic-sounding names that RE uses today.