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Friday, January 23, 2015

Royal Enfield Interceptor Register tracks famed motorcycles

Gary Elder's 1970 Royal Enfield Interceptor
 in a photo taken circa 1973.
The powerful and rare Royal Enfield Interceptor motorcycle only grows in fame and value as its days of glory in the Swinging '60s become ever fonder memories.

To keep track of these special motorcycles, vendor Burton Bike Bits began a Royal Enfield Interceptor Register years ago.

In 1981 Burton Bike Bits had purchased the remaining factory stock of parts originally saved from the Bradford-on-Avon factory when Royal Enfield went out of business in England in 1971. Burton's public Interceptor Register was handy for research, and has recently been improved and updated.

Now the Royal Enfield Interceptor Owners Group has added its own Interceptor Register where members can share information, stories and photos of their Interceptors.

It's not as public as the Burton Bikes Bits register; you'll need to join the Royal Enfield Interceptor Owners Group on Yahoo  (easily done) to keep updated. But there's more there and the goal is to follow each machine into the future as owners and future owners restore and update components.

This Interceptor Register is the handiwork of member Gary Elder, of Ontario, Canada, who titles himself PMR ("Person Maintaining the Register"). He first posted the REIOG Interceptor Register in March, 2014. His introduction to the register gives plenty of credit to other Interceptor enthusiasts who contributed inspiration, information, help, suggestions and concerns.

The resulting register is very detailed, including a "Condition Code" describing a motorcycle's present state, how close to "stock" it is, how close to operational it us and what sort of use it sees. There is a separate photo gallery keyed to each machine's register number.

Information on the register is "for the pursuit of the Interceptor hobby," and commercial use of the data is prohibited. Concern for owners' privacy has been key, with data made public or not depending on the preference of each owner.

Here's a "sample" view of the register (stripped down by Gary to include only his own Interceptor).

I counted 23 motorcycles on the actual register, all with additional Detail Pages and many with photos. Among them is Gary's own 1970 S2 Interceptor, Condition Code W2P5 — meaning "Under restoration, mostly stock, partly assembled, not used."

Are there other Interceptor owners out there who want to be listed in the registry?

"Anyone else that wants to put their machine data into the register, please just send me an email (at) g_elder@rogers.com and we'll get the ball rolling," Gary writes.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous1/23/2015

    You are cruel. The picture of the Interceptor is like waving a t-bone steak in front of a starving man.

    ReplyDelete