This is a 2021 Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 that was built into a Spitfire-inspired cafe racer. It won the Best Cafe Racer 2023 award at the Custom Show Emirates and it’s now being offered for sale.
Despite its vintage looked, the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 model series was released in 2018. It’s a part of the modern classic motorcycle genre that was spearheaded by the Triumph Bonneville back in the late 1990s.
The styling of this custom Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 was designed to evoke the Supermarine Spitfire.
Royal Enfield
Royal Enfield was founded in England in 1901 though the company can trace its lineage far further back in time, to companies that supplied everything from sewing needles and pens to bicycles and firearms.
From the turn of the 20th century to the outbreak of WWII, Royal Enfield grew to become one of the biggest motorcycle manufacturers in Britain. The Royal Enfield Bullet, a simple, single-cylinder model, would become the longest and unchanged production motorcycle in history, having remained in production since 1948.
The history of Royal Enfield could fill tomes, the key part of the story is that the company went from being British to Indian, though it now maintains the Royal Enfield Technology Centre at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground in Leicestershire, England where many of its new models are designed.
The Royal Enfield Interceptor 650
The Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 was developed as a modern classic motorcycle, that is, a motorcycle with vintage styling but modern engineering, and released as a lower-cost alternative to more established models like the Triumph Bonneville, Moto Guzzi V7, and the BMW R nineT.
The Interceptor is powered by a parallel twin 648cc engine with a single overhead cam, four valves per cylinder, 270º crank angle, with air and oil cooling. Power is modest at 47 bhp, though this falls in line with its market segment, and it weighs in at 202 kgs (445 lbs) dry.
Much like the other modern classic motorcycles to come before it, the Interceptor 650 has become a popular target for custom motorcycle garages. As a result of this, we’ve seen more and more of them popping up on the show circuit, and more motorcycle parts companies producing bolt-on additions for them.
The Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 you see here is a custom built by Zain J. Design. It’s based on a 2021 model that the built included fresh paint, clip-on handlebars, a new leather seat and grips, bar end mirrors, a wrapped exhaust with new silencers, relocated gauges, a relocated license plate, new Firestone tires, and a rear fender delete.
The bike is now being offered for sale out of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
As mentioned above the bike was inspired by the Supermarine Spitfire, a legendary British fighter plane from WWII, and it won the Best Cafe Racer 2023 award at the Custom Show Emirates.
The bike is now being offered for sale on Collecting Cars out of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and you can visit the listing here if you’d like to read more about it or place a bid.
Images courtesy of Collecting Cars
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
