Siddhartha Lal

Catching up with the Eicher CEO at the new Royal Enfield UK technical centre

- Sirish Chandran

On locating Royal Enfield's UK tech centre at Bruntingthorpe

If we wanted to attract the right chaps from UK, it’s going to have to be in the Midlands. This one [Bruntingthorpe] was particularly special as we get immediate access to test tracks, proving grounds and it’s also quite nice for productivity. There are two levels of security. Nobody’s here, we really are in a bit of a corner out in the country doing our own thing. And the entire might of the UK Midlands engineering expertise resides right here. The engineering industry is really large, not just F1 and motorsport, and we have access to all those facilities.

The PD head, chassis head, vehicle head, engine head, program head, industrial design, all of them were brought here.

On Harris Performance

We use Harris as a special chassis development arm of this tech centre. If we have some issues in chassis development, we bring in Harris and they give us new ideas, new thoughts. Their speciality is in making an adjustable mule, a bike where you can change 15-20 of the important chassis parameters. Harris are blue collared specialists. They know how to work with their hands. They come in and they are like, okay did you try this, did you try that? You know, troubleshooting. It’s simple stuff in the end but it takes quite a bit to get there and we’re learning a lot. We’re putting a huge amount of energy in having a good rideable motorcycle.

On the upcoming twin-cylinder Royal Enfield