At the 1901 Stanley Cycle Show, the first Royal Enfield motor-powered cycles were showcased to the public. In November 2021, exactly 120 years later, a team of engineers from the UK and Indian Technical Centres unveiled a faithful working replica of the original 1901 motor-bicycle as a homage to our history.
Royal Enfield - Since 1901. It’s a tagline every Royal Enfield enthusiast is familiar with.
It’s also a point in time that carries considerable weight in the motorcycle heritage stakes as it makes Royal Enfield the oldest motorcycle manufacturer in production.
Photos, illustrations, advertisements and period newspaper reports of the first Royal Enfield all exist. Today we can even buy the 1901 t-shirt. But has a 1901 motorcycle - or motor-bicycle as these pioneer machines were known - survived?
The answer, at this juncture, is probably not, although we still live in hope that someone, somewhere, will succeed in the quest to discover what is undoubtedly Royal Enfield’s holy grail.
Royal Enfield’s first motorised vehicle appeared in 1898. Known as a quadricycle, it was effectively two stout conjoined bicycles with a proprietary De Dion Bouton engine mounted at the rear. The rider was centrally perched on a saddle from where he steered the machine with a set of conventional bicycle handlebars. A passenger could be comfortably transported on a sumptuous leather seat at the fore and consequently quadricycles were also known as forecars. Three-wheeled Royal Enfield tricycles, again De Dion powered, soon followed.
Prototype motor-bicycles were developed during 1901 once Frenchman Jules Gobiet joined the company. Working hand-in-hand with Royal Enfield’s co-founder and chief designer, Bob Walker Smith, their first experimental model used a Minerva engine and was discussed in The Autocar newspaper of 21 September 1901. Minerva was a Belgian motor company that produced its own motocyclettes and, from 1901 onwards, sold reliable engines to a number of other manufacturers. These engines were known as ‘clip-on’ engines as they were simply clamped onto the bicycle frame tube.
As the infant motorcycle industry was not well established enough to have its own dedicated exhibition, the Minerva-powered prototype was displayed at the Stanley Cycle Show, London, in November 1901. Alongside it sat two quadricycles, a tricycle, and another Royal Enfield motor-bicycle.
At this time there were two main schools of thought as to where a motor-bicycle engine should be located - ahead of the main frame down tube, like the Minerva, or onto the steering head above the front wheel, as with the French-designed Werner.
The second Royal Enfield motor-bicycle at the Stanley Show followed the Werner layout but drove the rear wheel via a long crossed-over rawhide belt. Gobiet hoped that powering the rear wheel would reduce the side-slip commonly associated with front wheel driven Werner motor-bicycles.
It was this machine, with its engine mounted in front of the steering head, that was promoted and sold by the company for the following 12 months and which is celebrated today as the original Royal Enfield.
The 1 3/4 hp engine was manufactured by Royal Enfield to a design first patented by Alsace-based company, Ducommun. Unlike most other engines, the Royal Enfield’ crankcase was horizontally split. This avoided the disastrous consequences of oil dripping onto the front wheel from leaky vertically split crankcases.
The development model used a unique carburettor but this was soon replaced by a Longuemare spray carburettor. As this was situated on the side of the petrol tank some distance lower than the level of the engine’s cylinder head, a secondary feed was taken off the exhaust and passed around the carburettor mixing chamber to warm the fuel and prevent icing.
Lubrication was total loss, the rider squirting a charge of oil into the crankcase via a hand oil pump located on the left side of the cylinder. This would burn off after 10 to 15 miles at which point another shot of lubricant was required.
The cylinder head housed a mechanical exhaust valve and an automatic inlet valve. The inlet valve was held closed by a weak spring and opened by vacuum. As the piston travelled down the cylinder, the inlet valve was sucked open allowing a charge of air-fuel mixture in. A contact breaker assembly on the timing side axle triggered a trembler coil, which sent a rapid succession of pulses to the spark plug. This resulted in a good burn despite running at very low revs.
Operating the original Royal Enfield was nothing like riding the motorcycles of today. The rider started the machine by pedalling. Once the engine fired, the carburettor was opened from its tickover to full-on position by a hand lever located on the right side of the petrol tank.
There was no throttle - speed was modulated by the use of a valve lifter which was opened by a handlebar lever. To slow, the rider applied the valve-lifter. This opened the exhaust valve and as there was now no vacuum in the cylinder, the automatic inlet valve stayed shut and no air-fuel mixture entered the cylinder head. As soon as the rider closed the exhaust valve, the inlet valve opened and the engine fired. Hence, an observer might think the engine was intermittently cutting out when, instead, the rider was simply controlling his speed.
The front wheel had a band brake that was applied by a Bowden lever and cable arrangement operated by the rider’s left hand. The rear wheel also had a band brake but this was operated by back pedalling. The saddle was a leather Lycette La Grande and the 26” wheels were shod with Clipper 2 x 2” tyres. It cost exactly £50 which is the equivalent of £4000 / $5500 / 4 Lakh in today’s money.
The Autocar’s Stanley Cycle Show report on the Royal Enfield described its design at length, finishing with, ‘The machine has evidently been carefully studied, and we think should prove very serviceable in practice. We have by no means exhausted its special points, but space prevents further details at present.’
The front-mounted engine Royal Enfield was sold throughout 1902 until, thanks to a new design that circumvented a Werner patent, Royal Enfield relocated its engines to what is now considered the conventional position, inside the frame between the rider’s legs.
True, a surviving 1901 Royal Enfield motor-bicycle may be yet unearthed. However, while motorcycles from the 1930s to the 1960s have survived in large numbers - largely because they remained rideable in modern traffic conditions for many years - most pioneer machines, with slow revving engines, no gears and unfamiliar controls, have not enjoyed the same useful lifespan. Also, fewer were made so fewer remain. Ergo, a long-lost original turning up seems unlikely.
In 2020, with Royal Enfield’s forthcoming 120th birthday very much in mind, a team of engineers at the UK and Indian Technical Centres started to build a faithful working replica of the original 1901 motor-bicycle. This quickly became known as Project Origin.
Now, in 2021, it is nearing completion. Project Origin is a voluntary venture passionately pursued in the workers’ spare time. As there are no blueprints or surviving components to follow, the engineers use period photographs and illustrations as a guide and are blessed with invaluable contributions and knowledge from members of the small but enthusiastic pioneer motorcycle community.
Learning the old-world skills and practices required to recreate such a machine has been a challenging but fun process and the end result, due to be unveiled in September 2021, is certain to be one of the highlights of Royal Enfield’s 120th anniversary celebrations.
The 1901 Royal Enfield motor-bicycle’s legacy continues to be strongly felt 120 years on - and will soon be heard as the charming, slow-revving, doof - doof - doof engine of the Project Origin replica fires into life.