Royal Enfield cafe racer looks like famed GT5

The new Royal Enfield cafe racer looks an awful lot like the flashy Royal Enfield GT5 of  1965. So notes Jorge Pullin in his blog My Royal Enfields.

He presents a picture of the original GT5 to prove his point. The unit construction engines of both are immediately apparent. Royal Enfield could not have built anything so stylish with the old non-unit motor.

2013 (?) at top, 1965 at bottom.

Roy Bacon described the GT5 in his book "Royal Enfield, The Postwar Models:"

"The GT was the epitome of the mid-1960s cafe racer and a very real and successful attempt by Enfield to get with the image of the young customer of that time. It was a (250cc) Continental plus a little more power but a lot more style and line, just as demanded by the teenager of the day.

"It came about because Leo Davenport had taken the trouble to ask his dealers what they wanted to put on their showroom floor and had taken note of their points. His masterstroke was to produce a prototype and then get the enthusiastic apprentices in the works to add their views. The result was a stripped down, race-styled model with all the features the young craved for and would buy. Their fathers would plump for the Crusader Sports as a better value but what teenager could resist clip-ons, rear sets, a flyscreen, a swept back and cranked exhaust pipe and much more besides."

The exceptional looking GT5 was produced only for 1965 and 1966, as Royal Enfield in England began to fade, but it left a considerable impression and is still greatly admired.

And, sure enough, in pictures on the Team BHP forum, what do we see on the tank of the new Royal Enfield cafe racer? Continental GT.

New Royal Enfield cafe racer bears the name Continental GT.