ROLLIN' THUNDER

Malaysia's Rollin Machine crafts a world-class tribute to the Royal Enfield Interceptor

- NICOLAS STECHER

The story of Royal Enfield is a wild and circuitous one. In the 1950s and ,60s the British manufacturer was the preferred choice of café racers and gentlemen rogues who made that era in motorcycling one of the most influential ever. But like most British marques from the 20th century, Royal Enfield struggled to compete with cheaper—and regrettably more reliable —Japanese bikes that poured into Europe and America in the ,60s and ,70s, eventually leading to the company’s shuttering in 1971.

Except it didn’t, really. Across the globe in one of the British Empire’s former colonies, Royal Enfield had planted a seed that survives to this day. You see, in 1954 the government of India commissioned a huge order for Royal Enfield’s Bullet model to supply its troops along the Himalayan border with longtime rival Pakistan. This is where the highest roads on the planet exist, at celestial low-oxygen altitudes that test even the best engines. For this reason, India hand-picked the Bullet as its chosen steed because of the single-cylinder, stamped-steel bike’s ability to function reliably at these incredibly high altitudes, where the engines of most other motorcycles failed to operate consistently.