FEATURE - Royal Enfield Project Origin

Words: Mike Ryan and Royal Enfield

Photos: Royal Enfield

Royal Enfield are no strangers to tapping into their long and rich history when announcing new models, reviving old names or re-inventing past styling and design themes. Recently, Royal Enfield decided to go back to the very beginning of the brand’s motorcycle story and recreate the machine that started it all.

What Royal Enfield are calling ‘Project Origin’ is an authentic recreation of the company’s very first motorcycle from 1901. Months in the making, this “new veteran” was built from scratch and is as much the result of detective work as it is of Royal Enfield’s engineering expertise. No surviving examples of the first Royal Enfield motorcycle exist today, with no blueprints, either. The designers and fabricators only had three photographs, plus a few period advertisements and magazine articles to work from.

Royal Beginnings

The path to the first Royal Enfield motorcycle started back in 1893, when what had been ‘The Eadie Manufacturing Company Ltd.’ changed its name to ‘The Enfield Manufacturing Co. Ltd’ after securing a contract to supply rifle parts for the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield, near London. The company was also manufacturing bicycles at this time, so to reflect the prestige of this connection, bicycles that had previously been marketed under names like ‘Townsend’ and ‘Ecossais’ were rebranded as ‘Enfield’ or ‘Royal Enfield’. The ‘Made Like a Gun’ slogan first appeared in this period, too.

For many British manufacturers in the booming bicycle business of the 1880s and 1890s, motorcycles were the next logical step, but Enfield actually built a powered four-wheeler first, presenting a quadricycle made up of two bicycle frames with a DeDion engine in 1898. The first Royal Enfield motorcycle debuted three years later.

Developed jointly by Enfield’s co-founder Robert Walker Smith and Frenchman Jules Gobiet, the “motor-bicycle” was powered by a single-cylinder 1 3/4hp engine mounted above the front wheel, driving the rear wheel via a long crossover belt. This was an odd configuration, but Gobiet believed it to be superior to front-wheel drive, as it reduced slippage. The fuel tank was mounted within the frame’s triangle, with the rest of the machine’s bicycle origins being very obvious.

Like many early motorcycle manufacturers, Royal Enfield used bought-in engines initially, fitted to their own cycle parts, but soon started developing their own engines. Four-stroke side valve singles were the sole offering for the first few years of motorcycle production, with a v-twin introduced in 1909, followed by a two-stroke single.

Gordon’s Challenge

While Project Origin was born from the efforts of Royal Enfield’s design and engineering staff in the UK and India, its conception can be credited to Gordon May, the company’s in-house historian. When presenting elements of Royal Enfield history to staff ahead of the brand’s 120th Anniversary in 2021, May suggested a recreation of the 1901 motor-bicycle in order to re-instate a lost part of Royal Enfield’s history. As mentioned, no original examples of the 1901 bike exist, nor any technical drawings, which added to the challenge.

The all-volunteer team who took on Project Origin started not in the workshop, but the records office and library, in order to unearth as much information and century-old knowledge as possible – not just on Royal Enfield, but veteran motorcycles generally. This became a treasure hunt to find old knowledge and bring it back to life.

Joining teams at Royal Enfield’s UK and Indian technical centres were personnel from chassis specialists Harris Performance and experts in the veteran motorcycling and historic cycling communities.

Engine Intrigue

Contrary to accepted principles today, the mechanics and engineering of the original Royal Enfield motorcycle included an engine clamped to the steering head above the front wheel. As mentioned, this drove the rear wheel via a long cross-over belt and also deviated from accepted practice by featuring a horizontally-split crankcase. This avoided the potentially disastrous consequences of oil dripping onto the front wheel from vertically split crankcases that were notorious for leaking.

Subsequent investigation by the Project Origin volunteers revealed the engine was fired via a French-made Longuemare spray carburettor. This had been introduced in 1901 and was billed as the first “automatic” carburettor. The Longuemare design would be licence-built in the USA by Holley, who went on to become one of the best-known carburettor brands. On the Royal Enfield, this carby was placed on the side of the petrol tank, lower than the level of the engine’s cylinder head. A secondary feed was taken off the exhaust and passed around the carburettor mixing chamber to warm the fuel and prevent icing.

The cylinder head housed a mechanical exhaust valve and automatic inlet valve. The inlet valve was held closed by a weak spring and opened by vacuum. As the piston travelled down the cylinder, the inlet valve was sucked open, allowing a charge of air-fuel mixture in. A contact breaker assembly on the timing side axle triggered a trembler coil, which sent a rapid succession of pulses to the spark plug. This resulted in a good burn despite running at very low revs.

Lubrication was of the total loss type, which in this instance, required the rider to squirt a charge of oil into the crankcase via a hand pump located on the left side of the cylinder. This would burn off after around 10 to 15 miles of riding (16 – 24km), at which point another shot of lubricant was required to avoid the engine seizing.

Feet and Hands – and 50 quid

Starting the 1901 Royal Enfield required pedal power, after which, operation kept the rider’s hands busy. Once the engine fired, the carburettor was opened from tickover to the full-on position by a hand lever located on the right side of the petrol tank. With no throttle and a direct drive with no clutch, speed was modulated by a valve lifter lever on the handlebar. To slow the machine, the rider applied the valve-lifter. This opened the exhaust valve and, as there was now no vacuum in the cylinder, the automatic inlet valve stayed shut and no air-fuel mixture entered the head. As soon as the rider closed the exhaust valve, the inlet valve opened and the engine fired. An observer might think the engine was intermittently cutting out when hearing it, but the rider was simply controlling his speed.

The front wheel had a band brake that was applied by a Bowden lever and cable arrangement operated by the rider’s left hand. The rear wheel also had a band brake, but this was operated by back pedalling. The saddle was a leather ‘Lycette La Grande’ and the 26-inch wheels were shod with Clipper 2 x 2-inch tyres.

When new, Royal Enfield’s debut motor-bicycle cost £50, which is the equivalent of £4,000 today, or around AU$7,700.

The Recreation

To actually make a brand-new 120-year-old motorcycle, the Project Origin team combined new-world technologies with old-world skills and practices. As the build took shape, it became apparent that the level of craftsmanship and expertise required to manufacture certain components of the motor-bicycle were on par with anything CNC-machined today.

One of the most complex and intricate elements in this faithful reproduction was the folded brass petrol tank. Handcrafted from a single sheet of brass, this was masterfully folded, shaped, hammered and soldered using age-old tools and techniques almost forgotten to modern manufacturing.

The tubular frame was expertly cut, shaped and brass-braised by the team at Harris Performance using period tools. They also hand-made a number of brass levers and switches. The engine was built entirely from scratch in-house at Royal Enfield, using CAD to replicate each component. These designs were then either individually hand-cast or machined from solid metal. The Longuemare-style carburettor was built from scratch, too.

In addition to metal, the Project Origin team also worked with timber and leather, hand-turning wooden handles for the handlebars and re-manufacturing the drive belt and band brakes.

While most of the motorcycle is new, a handful of C1890s period parts were sourced for the project, including the paraffin headlamp, bulb horn, leather saddle and wheels. These were all reconditioned and the latter nickel plated to give the impression that the finished ‘Project Origin’ motor-bicycle was no different to the original that was unveiled to the public at the 1901 edition of the Stanley Cycle Show - an annual bicycle exhibition in London that had first been held in 1878.

A Fitting Tribute

Royal Enfield says Project Origin not only returns a missing piece of their history but represents yet another chapter for a brand that’s marked by decades of creativity, development, ingenuity and resilience. What started way back in 1901, with that slow-revving, doof - doof - doof engine of the very first motor-bicycle, set the foundations for what would become an extraordinary and ongoing 120-year adventure.

Running and rideable, but hard to start, tricky to handle and at its most comfortable in the 30-50km/h range, Project Origin made its public debut at EICMA, 2021. Since then, it’s been on tour around the globe including a long stint in the USA last year before finally coming to Australia in 2024.

Here, the new veteran was taken on a road trip to select Royal Enfield dealerships up and down the east coast, from Albury to Brisbane and Canberra to Coffs Harbour. Following its Australian tour, Project Origin went to Japan and is now back at Royal Enfield’s UK technical centre.