There’s talk on the grapevine about the Bajaj-Triumph alliance rolling out a 500cc motorcycle. Are they doing this to directly go up against Royal Enfield (RE)? Here’s what we know. In August this year, Bajaj and Triumph Motorcycles announced a new global partnership with the objective to jointly develop and deliver a range of mid-capacity motorcycles. The non-equity partnership has been designed to capitalize on the strengths of both companies in order to take on new markets and help each company increase their global footprint.
At the time, nothing was revealed about the prospective product line that the two companies would jointly explore, however, when you take into consideration the fact that RE is the undisputed leader in the mid-size motorcycle segment, it does become rather apparent that the alliance would then look at developing a motorcycle to take on the hot-selling RE Classic range.
What has emerged as a possible work in progress is a 500 cc motorcycle that is expected to hit the market by 2020. This is speculative at this point, yet, looking at market trends, the bike is expected to be designed along the lines of Triumph’s classic range of products such as the Bonneville. The retro-styling and ‘old school’ British charm of such a bike would place it right in RE territory and would technically be the first product to go head-on with the mighty Bullet and Classic here in India.
The Bajaj-Triumph alliance is also looking at faster turnaround times in bringing new products to the market and we could see as many as three new bikes for the Indian and international market by the end of 2020.