Street Cred

Royal Enfield’s Guerrilla 450 is a thoroughly fun and exciting motorcycle—it is not that the Himalayan has just tidied up for a visit to the city

- Rishad Saam Mehta

Barcelona-the city that is an open-air museum to Gaudi's architectural genius is where Royal Enfield launched their newest motorcycle-the Guerrilla 450. The company has christened it as such to suggest that it is a machine that breaks away from compendium of clones and one that personifies the pure and primal pursuit of fun.

And fun it certainly is! I spent a day riding it in the Catalonian countryside through medieval villages and past verdant vineyards, and excitement and exhilaration were the two emotions I felt the most.

The same Sherpa 450 engine that is at the heart of the Himalayan also powers the Guerrilla and the superb TFT instrument pod, the LED headlight and the switchgear is almost the same as the former on the top two of three variants that the Guerrilla is being offered in. The fly in the ointment that has also been carried over is the incredibly fiddly feel of the 4-directional joystick operated by the left thumb to scroll through various pages on the TFT display. It just feels very vague and undefined.

The TFT display is fabulous with the right amount of brightness (which changes as per the ambient light) and a suitable font size. This means immediate cognisance of required information from just a glance at the screen.