Ridden: Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650

Royal Enfield has added a cruiser to its wildly successful 650 twins range – and Alan Cathcart has been out to India to ride it.

The Super Meteor 650 is available in two versions targeting different slices of the middleweight cruiser market – and they’re both powered by the same proven 648cc parallel-twin engine, which made its name in the Interceptor and Continental GT.

Showa has now replaced Gabriel as suspension supplier for Royal Enfield’s twins; there’s a 19-inch forged aluminium front wheel and 16-inch rear, shod with Indian supplier CEAT’s new Zoom Cruz tubeless tyres specially created for the Super Meteor, replacing the Pirellis fitted to the two existing Royal Enfield twin-cylinder models. Braking is supplied on the Super Meteor pair by the same single 320mm front disc as on the earlier 650 models, gripped by a twin-piston calliper from Brembo’s Indian subsidiary ByBre, and dual-channel Bosch ABS is fitted as standard.

The standard Roadster version is claimed to weigh in at 241kg with oil and a 90% full 15.7-litre fuel tank, equating to circa 230kg with oil/no fuel. That’s quite a bit heavier than the 202kg quoted for the Interceptor twin with the same motor. Still, there’s no confirmed weight available for the Super Meteor 650 Tourer variant, which comes with a wind tunnel-developed windscreen, LED indicators front and rear, and a larger, even better-padded seat with extra room for a passenger, who also benefits from an abbreviated backrest. A 740mm seat height is quoted for both models, ensuring almost any rider can put both feet flat on the ground at rest, with forward footrests and a tall, wide, touring-style handlebar featuring adjustable clutch and brake levers.

There’s a single round instrument cluster combining an analogue speedo with an LCD digital panel showing gear selected, fuel level, time, odo and twin trips, and a USB socket located beneath the left side panel. Royal Enfield’s free-to-use ‘Tripper’ navigation pod, which links to the rider’s smartphone via Bluetooth, is included as standard for the first time on an RE twin-cylinder model.

The fully-spec’d nature of the Super Meteor duo hasn’t bumped up its price unduly, despite these now being Royal Enfield’s top-of-the-range models. There are two groups of pricing for the Roadster variant, depending on the colour chosen. The Astral trio of Black, Green and Blue cost £6,799 on the road, with the Instellar Grey and Green tints is £200 more pricey. Conversely, the Super Meteor 650 Tourer is available in two distinctive finishes, namely Celestial Red and Celestial Blue, each with a Cream tank top, costing £7,299. Those keen prices for a well-equipped middleweight twin indicate that Royal Enfield is continuing its established tradition of offering a huge amount of motorcycle for the money.

Okay, they look good, the pricing is great – but what are they like to ride? To discover that, I was asked to join a 40-strong press group from all over the globe in India to spend two days in the country’s largest but most sparsely settled state, Rajasthan, which is as far west as you can go in India, riding both bikes for more than 600km over almost every possible type of road condition.

As with the existing 650 models, the Super Meteor’s twin-cylinder engine is definitely the star of the show in terms of riding satisfaction, for this is a middleweight motorcycle that thinks big. It’s been cleverly developed to be all things to all riders, so that newbies can ride around town all day in fourth gear if they wish, and the hyper-flexible engine will allow them to do so without any hiccups or transmission snatch. But at the other end of the performance scale, it’s a willing companion for a blast through the rolling roads of Rajasthan. You never forget that it’s ‘just’ a 650, because it doesn’t have the torque or power of a 900cc twin or even a 750 – but that’s okay, because the Royal Enfield motor invites you to work hard at making it go fast, as it will. Just make maximum use of the light action slip-assist clutch and smooth, precise gearshift to keep it revving, and you’ll be rewarded with quite impressive levels of performance. It’s a willing partner in making both new Super Meteors a ton of fun to ride hard.

The often bumpy roads provided an excellent test of the Showa suspension, with the settings for the non-adjustable fork well chosen, so that even with the bike’s extra weight compared to an Interceptor or Continental GT it didn’t bottom out under heavy braking descending into a dip in the road, but kept on damping out road shocks from the uneven surface.

And the rear suspension was even better, with the middle preload setting on the adjustable Showa shocks damping out the worst of the bumps – I could honestly feel the rear wheel following the road surface as the shocks compressed and released.

Up front the stopping power of the single twin-pot ByBre calliper and 320mm disc is okay, with good feedback through the lever that you welcome to stop the ABS kicking in, as it will do on India’s dusty road surfaces. But either Super Meteor would definitely benefit from greater bite from the front brakes, making you glad you’ve got the hefty 300mm rear disc and twin-piston calliper that stops the bike better than its larger front partner.

It’s possible that pad choice has been directed towards making inexperienced riders less nervous about locking the brakes (they won’t, with ABS fitted as standard!), but thanks to the Super Meteor’s weight you must definitely use both brakes hard to stop from any speed.

The new Royal Enfield Super Meteors are sufficiently different from each other that despite sharing the same mechanical platform, they’re essentially two distinct new models – mid-capacity cruisers that are enjoyable to ride thanks to being blessed with a great engine, and super handling.

And when the low price point is taken into consideration, then very likely Royal Enfield CEO Siddhartha Lal will have yet another hit on his hands. For since Triumph walked away from its middleweight retro twin-cylinder sector it had carved such a successful niche in, Royal Enfield has had that segment of the market to itself, as there is nothing else available remotely like these new 650cc cruiser twins, and certainly nothing giving comparable performance at such a low price – for the time being, at least, until a Chinese manufacturer like CFMoto decides to come after the cruiser segment.

Tech Spec:

ROYAL ENFIELD SUPER METEOR 650

Engine: Air-/oil-cooled SOHC 648cc dry-sump parallel-twin four-stroke with four valves per cylinder, 270-degree crank, gear-driven counterbalancer and central chain camshaft drive, 9.5:1 compression ratio, Multipoint sequential Bosch fuel injection with dual 34mm Mikuni throttle bodies, 6-speed with gear primary drive

Power: 34.6kW/47PS/46.33bhp @ 7,250rpm (at crankshaft)

Torque: 52.3Nm/38.57lb-ft @ 5,650rpm (at crankshaft)

Chassis: Composite steel open cradle duplex spine frame with engine employed as fully stressed member, 27.6° head angle, 118.50mm trail

Suspension: 43mm Showa Big Piston telescopic fork with 120mm of wheel travel (F), box-section steel swingarm, Showa shocks, 101mm of wheel travel with 5-stage preload adjustment (R)

Wheelbase: 1500mm

Brakes: Front: 320mm steel disc with twin-piston floating ByBre calliper, Bosch ABS (F), 300mm steel disc with twin-piston floating ByBre calliper, Bosch ABS (R)

Wheels/tyres: Front: 100/90-19 CEAT Zoom Cruz 57H on 2.50” forged aluminium wheel (F), 150/80-16 CEAT Zoom Cruz 71H on 4.50” forged aluminium wheel (R)

Seat height: 740mm

Fuel capacity: 15.7 litres

Weight: 241kg with oil and 90% full fuel tank (230kg with oil/no fuel)

Warranty: 3-year unlimited mileage

More information: www.royalenfield.com

PHOTOS: Royal Enfield/Jason Critchell and Chippy Wood

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