Selling your Royal Enfield? Lots of luck

 Selling your Royal Enfield? Believe me, I feel your pain.

I recently blogged here that I would NEVER sell my Royal Enfield motorcycle. But I have sold a different motorcycle, and I have sold cars I now wish I had kept.

I had good reason for selling them, or thought I did. I am sure you have good reasons for selling your motorcycle, if that is what you have decided.

But I see you out there, going through all the stages of grief/indecision/commitment.

I read your advertisements on eBay and Craigslist.

Your first try names a price that is clearly too high. You haven't done your homework, and are picking a figure that reflects how much you value your motorcycle.

OR...

Your first try names a price that is ridiculously too low. Again, you haven't done your homework, and you are applying a dollar amount based on your decision to get it over with and give up the motorcycle.

Either way, you're stunned by the response. Either people ignore you completely, or you suddenly have more offers than you know what to do with.

Too many offers clearly means you have priced your motorcycle too cheaply.

Your second attempt shows that you've looked at other advertisements, and have a better idea what other people are asking for similar motorcycles.

Oddly, this doesn't entirely work either. The problem is that those ads are only still out there for you to read because their asking price is still too high, or their ad is unreasonable.

By "unreasonable" I mean that it may insist the price is "firm." (As if the seller's stiff neck alone could cancel free market forces!)

Or maybe the ad makes the seller seem like someone no one would want to deal with. Phrases like "do your homework," "I erase all texts," "don't waste my time," or "no test rides" only scare prospects away.

Sure, if that is the way you feel, then go ahead and say so, but wait until AFTER the potential buyer reaches out. Save the warning to bring reading gear, motorcycle endorsement and cash until the prospect asks where he can come to see the motorcycle.

Or, maybe your ad is too bare bones.

"What you see is what you get" isn't very helpful if the photos don't show everything good about the motorcycle. Roll it out of the shed before you take the pictures! List the good things about the motorcycle, and list the cons, too.

Even so, there may be few takers.

Winter and around the holidays are usually bad times to sell, for obvious reasons.

Keep in mind that brand new Royal Enfields are selling at prices that make them enormous bargains. They're your competition, and they're awfully hard to beat. You're not going to get rich selling your used Royal Enfield.

Sellers who insist on running their ads week after week are inviting buyers to wonder why no one else is buying.

An even worse tactic is playing with your asking price: say, switching from $3,700 to $3,699. You might as well tell buyers that you are desperate.

However it goes, don't be too hard on yourself. It takes time to find the right person who wants to spend the right amount.

You can expect, in years to come, to glace at the advertisements yourself, wondering what it would cost to buy back that Royal Enfield you let go. It's either going to hurt, or it's going to make you smile.

About 1973 I sold an MGA for a price so low I'm ashamed to reveal it. It was falling apart so fast I just couldn't afford to keep it running. It was, at the time, a 15-year-old car.

Today, a nice MGA will cost many, many, many times the price I got — yet, today, that car would be almost 70 years old!

Should I laugh or cry? I'll say I should laugh: it's certainly not any more reliable now than it was then.

Good luck.

Royal Enfield: Not 'Royal,' not in 'Enfield'

An antique Enfield rifle made by BSA was appropriately on display at a motorcycle show, next to a World War I BSA motorcycle. What did it have to do with Royal Enfield? Nothing.

 As with so many other realizations in my life, it started with my wife. 

She was reading my item about a 1915 BSA motorcycle displayed at the Dania Beach Vintage Motorcycle Show. The motorcycle was displayed alongside a World War I British Enfield rifle, manufactured by BSA. 

"Oh, so this combines both BSA and Royal Enfield!" she commented. 

"What???" I responded. Then I saw what she meant. 

How had I failed to realize this all along? 

The name "Royal Enfield" is a complete fiction, a creation of clever marketing. 

Royal Enfield, of course, has nothing to do with BSA (although there was also a BSA factory in Redditch, England, ancestral home of Royal Enfield).

Royal Enfield has nothing, really, to do with the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, England, which designed that rifle.

Royal Enfield is in no real sense "royal." Unlike the Royal Small Arms Factory, the motorcycle company never belonged to the monarch.

Royal Enfield's longtime motto, "Made Like a Gun," may be a valid comparison, but Royal Enfield never made small arms itself, although it certainly made a wide variety of armaments, including cannon shells and parts for guns.

Royal Enfield made, and still does make, "Bullet" motorcycles, but although it once made shells for cannons, I don't know of it having made what are commonly called "bullets."

Royal Enfield products have always stood on their merits. But, apparently, the firm's marketing in its early days relied on stolen prestige.

The British firm Royal Enfield descended from George Townsend and Company, a maker of needles in Hunt End, near Redditch. The bicycle craze of the 1880s pulled the firm into making bicycle parts and, by 1890, its own bicycles.

When Albert Eadie took over and became managing director in 1891, the name changed to Eadie Manufacturing. Author Peter Miller describes what came next in his book "Royal Enfield, The Early History."

Towards the end of 1892 "the Eadie Manufacturing Company gained a sizeable contract for the supply of Enfield rifle components to the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield in Middlesex. The contract was to prove highly lucrative and helped guarantee the future of the company."

The Eadie company was just adding a new line of bicycles equipped with the new Dunlop pneumatic tires, replacing solid rubber tires.

"In recognition of the successful completion of the contract with the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, it was decided these should be marketed under the Enfield name," Miller writes.

This was obviously a matter of courting fame by association.

In 1893 the word "Royal" was added to "Enfield" to designate a line of even higher quality bicycles to be sold alongside the plain Enfields.

The trademark logo, usually displaying a cannon, and the motto "Made Like a Gun," came the same year.

Royal Enfield's "Made Like a Gun" logo usually featured a cannon, but this 1902 ad for its first motorcycle featured a military rifle with bayonet. The Enfield armory had stopped production of percussion cap rifles like the one shown in 1867, long before the Enfield Cycle Co. formed.

Also in 1893, the Enfield Manufacturing Company was formed to market the bicycles made by the Eadie company.

In 1896 the New Enfield Cycle Company formed to combine the Enfield sales department and the division of the Eadie company that was making its wares. (Eadie separately continued making bicycles, and was eventually acquired by BSA!)

There were many corporate changes to come, including dropping the "New" from the Enfield Cycle Company name, and getting into, and then out of, the business of making automobiles.

By 1898, all machines were identified as "Royal Enfields."

Of course, these were all still bicycles!

The first two-wheeler Royal Enfield we would recognize as a motorcycle appeared in 1901. But, in 1906, the Enfield Cycle Company dropped motorcycles, sales of which were in a slump, and fell back on its profitable production of bicycles.

Royal Enfield was back in the motorcycle business in 1910, when the market perked up.

The "Bullet" name, meant to designate sports models, came along in 1933.

For a far more complete version of the early history of Royal Enfield, see Jorge Pullin's year-by-year "Virtual Museum" relating the events of 1898 to 1929 on his blog "My Royal Enfields."

British motorcycles show the flag

There were a lot of sights to see.

 You couldn't not look. Motorcycle enthusiasts at the 2026 Dania Beach (Florida) Vintage Motorcycle Show couldn't help staring. 

The flat-tank 1915 BSA Model K motorcycle displayed by George and Theresa Cole, of Cocoa Beach, Florida, looked showroom fresh, despite being 110 years old. 

Also, it was shown alongside a rifle, complete with bayonet. 

1915 BSA Model K is largely original. Looks perfect.

Very arresting. BSA means, of course, "Birmingham Small Arms," formed in 1861 to make weapons.

The bayonet was protected inside its scabbard, but still looked threatening, and the rifle muzzle looked as big as a cannon — it's the effect you get looking down the barrel.

An onlooker suggested stepping around the motorcycle, past the bayonet, to appreciate the motorcycle's use of belt drive. I took in the sight of the toothed belt from a safe distance.

Bayonet in its scabbard, but still intimidating.

A helpful placard explained that the rifle "is a 1915 BSA British Enfield Mk 1 Model III, .303 caliber military weapon, fitted with the correct Model 1907 bayonet."

The four and a half horsepower Model K motorcycle was BSA's first "motor bicycle" without pedals. It had a 557cc single-cylinder motor with a kick-start, and three-speed transmission.

"These were highly popular and quickly adopted for military and private use," the placard advised. Oddly, according to the placard, BSA did not continue making military motorcycles during World War I.

Cap adds another touch of authenticity to display.

"In mid-1916 BSA succumbed to British War Department pressure and exclusively manufactured weapons for the remainder of the war. BSA did not resume motor bicycle production until 1919."

Although many motorcycles were voluntarily enlisted for service use by their civilian owners,  "it is believed this motor bicycle did not serve on the Western Front, but was used for homeland support."

The sign goes on to say that, other than repainting of the tank in 1965, it "remains in its original, unmolested condition." A factory sidecar once fitted to it has, however, been lost.

The motorcycle was shown with no lighting equipment, but it had a comfy sprung pillion seat, speedometer, and brakes front and rear. An officer's cap with cap badge rested on the pillion seat. Wicker baskets suggested it might have been used to transport and release carrier pigeons.

Gathered with other British motorcycles at the show, the 1915 BSA was in good company.

1942 Triumph 3HW served with the RAF during World War II.

Nearby was a Triumph 3HW, veteran of Royal Air Force service in World War II. Sold as surplus in 1946 it was returned to civilian colors. It was shown by Scott Fisher, of Boca Raton.

Next to that was the 1942 Royal Enfield WD/CO of Bruce Gipson, of Boca Raton. It is in its Royal Corps of Signals uniform.

Royal Enfield WD/CO as it looked during World War II.

And then came the 1961 BSA Goldstar of John Perry, of Fort Lauderdale.

1961 Goldstar single outran the twin cylinder competition of its day.

The 1959 Ariel Square Four of Jimmy Sabino, of Marco Island, was nearby, making quite a statement. And the statement seemed me to be "This motor is TOO BIG for this frame."

Ariel Square Four.

Glorious to see.