Let me lay my cards on the table. The Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 is one of my favourite motorcycles of recent years. Charming, easy going and affordable, it’s no wonder it has been a real sales hit. The only real surprise is that it’s taken over seven years for a scrambler version to appear…
When the Interceptor first came along in 2018, it was one of two new models (the other being the café racer style Continental GT) to be powered by a new 650cc air-cooled twin-cylinder engine. The Super Meteor cruiser would appear a few years later but, considering how popular scramblers have been for over a decade now, it felt for a while like Royal Enfield was missing a trick by not producing an off-road inspired derivative to offer a lower cost alternative to Ducati and Triumph’s Scrambler models.
All that changed last winter when, in a tsunami of hype, Royal Enfield launched the Bear 650. It follows a well proven path that’s been trodden since the beginning of motorcycling itself, taking a standard roadster and modifying it through the fitment of some rugged off-road style suspension and wheels.
In more recent years, Triumph reinvented the genre and it’s hard to believe that it’s almost 20 years since the Bonneville Scrambler was introduced on a Steve McQueen inspired wave of nostalgia.
Royal Enfield’s inspiration for the Bear comes from a race held in California in 1960. The Big Bear was a gruelling desert rally which was won by a 16-year-old hotshot called Eddie Mulder on a 500cc Royal Enfield Fury. Fast Eddie, as he would inevitably become nicknamed, would go on to become an icon.
The performances brought him to the attention of the Triumph factory team and he would be linked with them throughout his glorious career, although Royal Enfield don’t mention that part of the story. Sixty-five years on though, and the event does give this new model its name, as well as inspiring the kooky livery of our test bike. Called Two Four Nine (249 being Mulder’s race number in the fabled race) the colour scheme of our bike pays direct tribute to the racing legend.
While I’m a big fan of the Interceptor, on paper the Bear is an inferior product. It’s (a little) heavier, (a little) taller, (a little) less comfortable and (a good chunk) more expensive than the motorcycle it is based on. Still, it looks great and (exhaust aside) is probably the most authentic looking interpretations of the 1960s Scrambler since Triumph rebooted the genre in 2006.
Climb on board and it’s got all the classic scrambler touches. At 830mm the seat height is 25mm more than the Interceptor (that’s an inch if you’re American) and its 3kg heavier (that’s over six and a half of those elle bee esses for the imperial ones among you).