ABS and a New Color Are Coming Stateside
The Royal Enfield Himalayan is the well-received little adventure bike that I’m super thrilled to see sold in North America. The company decided to make some updates to the North American version of the bike recently. The Himalayan now comes with standard ABS. It also gains a new color.
Royal Enfield rolled these updates out on the bike in India last year according to ADV Pulse. The updates must have proved to make sense if the company decided to bring them to the U.S. As of yet, no other updates will come to the bike.
The standard ABS is the most notable update. It’s a dual-channel-ABS system, which means there are two different sensors—one for each wheel. It is always on. Snow and Granite have been the color options for the bike, but now there’s a third called Sleet. It blends shades of white and gray together into a blocky camouflage-like graphic on various parts of the motorcycle. Snow and Granite will still be offered, too.
The heart of the Himalayan will not change. The bike retains the same 411cc SOHC fuel-injected engine that it has always had. It puts out a respectable but not amazing 25 hp and 26 lb-ft of torque. There were some rumors floating around that Royal Enfield would go bigger with the engine, but that hasn’t happened yet. The little billy-goat of a bike should be mostly unchanged with only these two small updates coming.
I see that as a good thing. Royal Enfield has a unique bike in the Himalayan. While the company needs to continue building on it, there’s still a lot of work that can be done getting the current bike out into the market. At this point, I see no serious need to start changing it.