Royal Enfield Bear 650 Breaks Cover, Launch At EICMA 2024

Royal Enfield has unveiled its latest 650 cc motorcycle: the Bear 650. While prices of the scrambler will be shared at EICMA this year, the motorcycle looks quite like a gnarly version of the Interceptor 650. And here’s what makes up the Bear 650.

For starters, the name comes from a key moment in Royal Enfield’s history where American dirt racer and stuntman Eddie Mulder rode a modified Royal Enfield twin to victory at the gruelling Bear Run race in 1960. Eddie’s exploits made Royal Enfield a known entity in America and it gave birth to the original Interceptor 750, which was basically the Constellation 750 but with knobby tyres and a bit of tweaking to take on any surface.

Hence, the Bear 650 too is built on similar lines. It uses the Interceptor 650 as the base but beneath the skin a lot of changes have been done. For starters, the frame has been fortified at strategic places to make sure that it is capable of handling the extra forces that would be generated by the premium hardware and when taking on rough road activities.

This frame has been raised quite a bit by the long travel Showa suspension components and the 19-/17-inch specially-developed MRF Nylorex dual-purpose tyres the Bear 650 possesses. As a result, the seat height has gone up to 830 mm, nearly 30 mm more than the Interceptor. Even the ground clearance is now 184 mm. There is a 2kg decrease in weight, 216 kg to be precise. While we were hoping for the Bear 650 to be a bit lighter, because of the presence of the two-into-one exhaust, Royal Enfield has said that the extra fortification and chunkier components have restricted the weight savings it could manage.

There is a small performance advantage that the new exhaust layout provides. Royal Enfield has managed to generate a bit more output from the 648 cc parallel-twin mill. It is now making 46.80 bhp and 56.5 Nm, almost 1 bhp and 4.5 Nm more than the stock tune. It still doesn’t get any electronic rider aids apart from dual-channel ABS, which can be turned off at the rear for dirty dancing activities.

Visually, the Bear 650’s differences arise from the side panels that bear racing number plate holders, a shorter subframe and an even shorter scrambler-style bench seat. This is the only Royal Enfield 650 cc bike to get all LED lighting as even the turn indicators are of the advanced kind. And lastly, you get the same circular colour TFT screen from the Himalayan 450 and the Guerrilla 450 on the Bear 650, replete with the connectivity suite. There are five colours to choose from – Broadwalk White, Petrol Green, Wild Honey, Golden Shadow, and Two Four Nine – each one of which takes inspiration from racing liveries of the 1960s and 1970s.

As for the pricing, we can only reveal the same on November 5 at 2pm. In case you want to check out the bike in detail, our walkaround video is playing now on Youtube. So, go check it out and drop your thoughts on what should be the pricing of the bike in the comments section.