Get Hotcars Premium. Start your free trial today

Royal Enfield has been around for well over a century, yet most motorcyclists don't know much about the Indian manufacturer.

Royal Enfield has evolved into one of the biggest motorcycle manufacturers in the world, selling its retro-themed bikes on every continent.

Today they have defied all the doubters and the Indian manufacturer is able to make reliable, well-made bikes. For years, their bikes were viewed as cheap, disposable motorcycles, much like those made by their Chinese counterparts.

Their British roots are all but a distant memory, but for decades they have held onto them and now as we find ourselves in the middle of a retro bike craze, their model lineup continues to grow as fast as the demand for their affordable bikes.

Royal Enfield has been in non-stop production for 120 years now, it is an incredible feat in any modern industry, let alone the infamously fickle motorcycle industry where companies come and go all the time.

It is more complicated than plain fact though because there was a transition period where the company expanded to India, then ceased to exist in the country of origin but continued in India unabated, and is now expanding into different markets once again, including the UK, their original country of origin.

Their most famous contribution was known as the Flying Flea, a light-duty motorcycle that could be parachuted in to aid ground forces.

It is honestly one of the most advanced ideas in a time when troops were forced to scatter and regroup after parachuting into a battle with very few resources.

Related: These Were The 10 Most Groundbreaking Machines Of WWII

Their Bullet has been in production for over 90 years now, it has seen several updates over the years, but at its core, it still looks very similar to the original bike.

It is still their staple motorcycle, it is affordable, fun, and fits right in with the retro crowd that has grown so much in recent times.

You would not think it by looking at the modern version of the big, heavy, slow Bullet, but in the 50s it was a Six Days champion.

Over the years the motorcycles they use for endurance racing have changed quite a bit, all the bikes today are dedicated high performance machines, but back in the 50s you simply took a reliable road bike and modified it yourself for dirt riding.

Related: KTM 450 EXC-F Six Days: Costs, Facts, And Figures

Royal Enfield first teamed up with an Indian motorcycle manufacturer to produce bikes under license in 1955, since then bikes have been made in India non-stop.

Technically Royal Enfield was in administration (bankrupt) by 1967, and the last of their bikes were shipped by 1970, but the Indian manufacturer bought up the naming rights, and they evolved into the company we are all familiar with today.

The single biggest issue that Royal Enfield had in the UK was labor costs, striking was frequent, and production slow.

Workers in India got paid (still get paid) a whole lot less, but it took some time for them to get the bikes up to standard, and by the time they were getting it consistently right their design was dated and no longer relevant in Europe or America.

Related: These Two Cars Were So Bad They Made Its Workers Go On Strike

The old, outdated designs were not much of a problem for the domestic Indian market, which still had a lot of respect for the old British brand that had by then become a staple.

You could easily criticize them for not spending anything on research and development, but they simply embraced the throwback design theme and when it came back into fashion all over the world they did reinvest in other models like the Himalayan.

In what actually turned out to be a fairly large-scale experiment, they launched an Enfield Diesel, which was a small displacement diesel squeezed into the Bullet frame.

Hopes for the compression ignition engine were at an all-time high back in the 90s, but they ended up falling well short of all emissions targets in reality, and the rise and rise of electric bikes has all but doomed the technology in small-displacement applications like motorcycles, but you have to love them for trying.

Related: These Are The 10 Best Diesel-Powered Vehicles Ever Sold In The United States

Many publications have hailed their 650 as the best middleweight retro bike, and for good reason, 47 horsepower might not sound like much, but it is almost twice as much as their other air-cooled bikes make. It is also well put together, and the design is timeless.

The latest Himalayan rectified many early teething issues and is now highly regarded in the Adventure bike community, their latest offshoot of the Himalayan, the Scram 411, looks great and offers more value than any other would-be scrambler on the market.

Nostalgia is a very powerful marketing tool, for so many, the past is something that seems both fascinating and intangible, retro bikes make it in some small way, tangible.

Unlike the bikes of the past, these are actually incredibly reliable, thanks largely to their simplicity, and will serve you well as a basic form of transportation as well as a little time machine.

Luke Zietsman is an all out automotive enthusiast based in The Philippines. If it has two or four wheels he has either owned it, researched about it or dreamed about it.