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[Riggers]

I'll just have one more bite at this cherry before sinking back into lethargy. I take on board much of what STU has said but maybe I didn't quite make myself clear. I bought my Classic 500 in 2000 for £2,800 because I wanted just that - a classic 500cc 'British' bike that looked for all the world like a 1960(ish) Bullet BUT wasn't 40 years old and didn't have 40 years of wear and tear on it. To me that was its selling point (or USP as the modern jargon would have it). The new Indian Classic 500 priced at £5295 according to STU is 89% more expensive now and BECAUSE it now bears no resemblance to the original Bullet with its new engine, disc brakes, unit construction, electric start, etc etc has lost its USP. It's just another modern bike, with a modern price tag but lacking quite a bit in the finish and reliability departments. It should be cheap but its not. After reading STUs thread it took me about 30 seconds to find a brand new Bonneville for £5,699, if I'd taken a bit longer I maybe could have found one for less. To me that's a few hundred quid more than a Bullet. And on inflation I'd say in 1975 (unfortunately I'm old enough to remember) it hit 25% in one year - now that's inflation.

[Norm]

Over Christmas I was looking in a showroom, new W800 sitting on the floor $10,000, with an Enfield at $8500/9000 unless you were a dedicated Enfield nut it would be a no brainer

[rog]

I'm with Stu in this discussion. The cheapest current Bullet may have a unit construction engine/gearbox and a disc brake, but otherwise it looks identical to the countless thousands of 350 Bullets made in India. It should also be remembered that the final version of the Reddich Bullet had a unit construction engine/gearbox. At the end of the day the current Indian bikes are indisputably descendants of the original 1948 swingarm Bullets, which is a lot more than can be said of the ersatz Bonnevilles produced in Hinkley (or Thailand or wherever).

[STU]

Riggers, so they are discounting new Bonnies by more than 10%? Well, I was lead to believe that they were selling and no discounts were needed! That will hit their resale value then! MadMike, what do you make of that?
I also know that most new Jap bikes are heavily discounted at the moment - Norm, you speak of the W800, which is a lovely bike, but MadMike will confirm that they are probably sitting on showroom floors here in the UK for over a year and being discounted, but still very low sales volumes.
By way of contrast Enfields in the UK are set up as a low volume proposition and the smallish number sold are doing so at low discounts. The thing is the Indian home market has taken up the UCE EFI models with such vigor that even with a new additional factory they can sell every one of 100,000 p.a being made - with smallish numbers going to their export markets.
I believe that RE India doesn't need to sell the machine cheaply into the export market, for them the EFI machine is a massive improvement and they can slowly build up their exports over time.
What is for sure is that quality and reliability of the new bikes is a massive improvement over the older ones.
I have experienced Japanese build quality and reliability and the Hondas and (particularly) Yamahas I have owned have not been any great shakes I can tell you. The Kawasakis were much better but still suffered from corrosion, and I have never owned a Suzuki but have heard their finish is particularly poor. Didn't BMW also come bottom on a bike reliability survey a year or so back?
Finally Riggers the new Bullet EFI 500 is a dead ringer for your classic 500 - so this is the equivalent model. The list price is £3995 and I reckon that a new one will cost you just about that - so a 42% increase in cost after 13 years inflation (sorry mate you'll never convince me that things haven't risen in price considerably in that time!) AND with a whole host of quality, performance and technical improvements. Never, ever 'just another modern bike' - it's the only pushrod 500 single in the UK market!
Still, you wouldn't buy one at any cost Riggers becuase it has E/S, disc, 5 speed L/H shift etc, etc, etc.
Never mind because RE are selling all that they can make and the new machines for 2013/2014 will only build on this.
The market HAS moved on from iron engined 50 year old technology and so has RE - and all it's hugely increased number of customers in the home market.
Exports will just be a nice sideline for them - and I for one will be happy to have one of their unique and rare bikes in the UK.

[MadMike]

Stu, I have yet to find anybody discounting a Bonneville unless there is an offer from Triumph, and even then they usually offer a few hundred ounds of extras rather than discount. The W800 on the other hand does not appear to be moving although it is undoubtedly a good bike. The majority of retro buyers appear to be those who want the "old" style Enfield or the "new" style Bonneville. As Stu well knows my taste in bikes is wide and varied. Indeed if I ever win the lottery I shall probably but one of everything on the market. I looked long and hard before I bought my Thruxton, which is ridden Madly I might add.......some on here have seen it, and it ticked more boxes for me. I wanted for instance the larger capacity engine. The extra cc's do make motorway riding easier. No fear of being rear ended by a blind car driver. I also wanted a bike with as close to100% reliability as I could get, and unfortunately the Bullet didn't satisfy those needs, IMHO obviously. I was also more than pleased to spend my money with a UK company employing, for me anyway, local labour. Anyway I have a 350 single already and I do like variety. Having said all that There is a real need for RE to get a UK importer in place sooner rather than later, and I will be very happy when that is done.

[Chevy]

It is true that Enfield are selling every bike they can make in their domestic market with long waiting lists, but companies like Enfield want to be seen to have a large export market. It is very important for some Indian companies to have this export market and I believe this includes Enfield. I guess they sell a couple of thousand Bullets a year to the western world and I struggle to see this is profitable. I would think that the factory would want and need to expand their exports and try and sell a couple of thousand bikes a year in the UK alone. The UK market is considerably down on what it was a few years ago before the EFI came out. Obviously the down turn of sales of all bikes here is down but the price is not helping for the quality of bike.


There are only so many loyal Enfield owners who will buy one, they need to break in to different markets and attract a different type of customer, this is where they are failing. Enfield have a unique bike but to break into these markets they need the right combination of quality, price, performance and marketing. All 4 of these are currently lacking, I am not saying Watsonian did not do a good job, but without the other 3 they had a difficult job. Whoever takes their place will also struggle to sell the quantity that the factory expects until the factory do something about the other 3 issues. I can not see this happening soon as it has not happened since Enfield started exporting to the UK in 1977.


Royal Enfield, if you want to export take a look at Triumph, whatever anyone says about them, they are a success story and for the record, I am one of the loyal Enfield owners and never owned a Triumph!
Chevy

[Paul]

Pricing is a complicated issue. If you
look at the home market price for an identical model you will be
astounded, currently around 100,000 rupees. A bit of googling prices
and exchange rates is an eye opener.
http://bikes.pricedekho.com/royal-enfie ... -list.html



This is something the new distributor
will need to tackle. In this internet age we can compare global
prices. 5 times the price in Europe (or 6 times the price in Oz)
doesn't seem right. They are priced at what they think the market
will bear, rather than what they cost.



I know shipping by container load adds
a small cost, and there is VAT to pay and some import taxes, but the
numbers put people off. I'm sure there would have been lots of Bullet
owners upgrading if the bikes were say £2995 (3 times the Indian
price).
The 2 issues of: the bike no longer
being a remanufactured British bike, and the high differential
between Indian and European prices is a problem.



I'd buy a new EFI if it was the retail
price in India plus fair shipping and import costs.



And I'd prefer Hitchcocks to be the
distributor!

[apparently lucky eddie]

I think you're about right on the price Paul, a shade under £3K for a top-of-the-range model and about £2,300 for a normal/average model and I would maybe perhaps consider a new enfield. At £4K including 20% Vodka-And-Tonic, 10% Car-tax and dealers mark-up, the new EFI/UCE is way overpriced (considering too the pathetic lack of performance).
Now if we ever get offered a decent (Vee)twin things may be different...
Bang on target re. Mr H as distibutor too.

[STU]

So, to summerise - Riggers reckons that you can buy a discounted Bonnie for £5699 or possibly less but my local Trumpet dealer told me yesterday that there was no chance of a discount, only low cost finance and accesories at a discount. MadMike was quite right (as I find he regularly is on all things Trumpet), Bonnies are selling and they regularly introduce new paint schemes and specials to keep the design fresh. I sat on some of them yesterday and they are truly superb machines.
Either way - there is no question of the price difference of £2404 between the lead-in std Bonnie and the lead-in RE Bullet 500 EFI. The minimum difference between the two bikes is £1104 for a top-of-range RE Classic EFI Chrome vs the std Bonnie. SO, with no (as confirmed) discounts on the Bonnie then that's HARDLY A FEW QUID difference - let's be 100% CLEAR ON THAT POINT.
The Bonnie is bigger, faster and superior in many ways than a RE EFI, which is exactly what you would expect for £2400! Just like a new Vespa GTS 300 is about the same money more than my brothers new CPI Bravo 125 scooter - and is also bigger, faster, better. It's how it works in life.
Paul and Eddie suggest that around £2995 is a fair price for a new Enfield - which is £195 more than Riggers paid 13 years ago for a machine that is substantially inferior in every way. IT SIMPLY ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN - and why would it? No other vehicle on the UK market is selling for the same price as it was 13 years ago - and that's before you factor in the significant investment that has been made in the factory and improvements in the machines in that time as well as the additional equipment specification.
The Indian home market pricing is a totally different situation - it has to be pitched at where their economy and local wage-levels will allow. The shipping, VAT, import duty, type approval do NOT just a 'small cost'. Just try shipping (and insuring) a bunch 200kg crates half way around the world!!
A few on this thread have written about the Indian exports situation - but unless you have inside information of RE's ideologies, strategies, profit margins, long-term plans etc than I believe that you may have to consider that RE simply sell at a much higher price to export markets, which yields excellent profits from the controlled volumes that they can take from their production lines, which are otherwise supplying all that they can make for their growing home market - which incidently is also paying a greater price these days due to the new machines increased spec and quality.
I reckon that they don't give a hoot about if Apparantly Eddie or Chevy would pay the same now as they would have got for the bikes 13 years ago - nor do I expect thay care or need to be told what markets that they need to break into and where (with their production increasing) they are failing!
In my opinion I reckon that RE are happy to sell limited numbers of their product into the export markets and make very good margins for them. This keeps the product in these markets a bit exclusive and higher value. They are very proud of the investments that they have in a new engine, build quality, performance, reliability etc and have moved their game on massively from producing the same machine as built in Redditch since the 1950's.
If a few people in the UK don't wish to appreciate that and won't buy one then there are plenty who will (as economic conditions allow) - and then they have a platform for launching new, bigger and more expensive models going forward.
But as for a new machine, which they have invested in very heavily, for the same price that they got for old one years ago? You have got to be joking.
Ask any other manufacturer the same - I don't think that their answer will be very polite!!!
Long live RE, I am looking forward to the new importer, new models, new markets, new custmer base. The past can be left behind.

[Paul]

Hi STU,



Shipping by container is actually very
cost effective, quite different to trying to ship a single bike in a
crate (though private importers still find it worthwhile). A full
container makes the individual shipping cost very low, it works for
Chinese bike importers that sell their bikes at a quarter of the
price of RE's, so shipping is not the expense that is often touted.



There is a problem with pricing, or why
else has the importer thrown in the towel and many dealers walked
away. When you price for what you THINK the market will bear, and get
it wrong, people vote with their wallet.



As every new version since the classic
has been introduced the pricing has been pushed up higher than
expected and the differential between Indian home market prices and
western prices has grown orders of magnitude. This is testing the
market to see what the west will pay for the product.
I notice that for the cafe racer
recently shown that there is no price yet stated and customers were
being asked how much would they pay for it. How much they can extract
from the customer base.



I don't see why a standard RE should be
anymore expensive than say a LML scooter from India in real terms.



If the pricing issue isn't sorted then
the new importer will struggle. Dealers can't survive on tiny
volumes, even if the margins are high.
I'd like RE to get back to the same
volumes 10 years ago in the UK with the classic.




A core part of the market is Classic
owners upgrading to EFI's – returning business - at the current
pricing it ain't happening. Someone who bought a 350 in 2004 for
£1995 doesn't seem to want to pay more than double again for an
EFI...or they would.