“So will an Indian manufacturer ever contest MotoGP? Why not?”
Something significant happened in the world of motorcycling this year: India overtook China as the world’s leading manufacturer of powered two-wheelers, with an annual output of more than 18 million units. That’s a lot of motorcycles and scooters, but there are many more powered two-wheelers on the roads of India – around 160 million. The country moves and grooves on two wheels, with riders ducking and diving through the traffic, which seems to flow like a single river running in several different directions. It’s a joy to watch: a remarkable motion of beautiful chaos.
A dozen Indian brands now manufacturer motorcycles, generating profits that have inevitably led some to motor sport. The country’s biggest brand, Hero MotoCorp, contested the 2023 Dakar with its own motorcycle, winning two stages, so these are no longer what some Westerners once mocked as second-class outfits.
By chance, India marked its crowning as the world’s greatest motorcycling power by hosting its first MotoGP round in September, in the 75th year of the world championship. The event was staged at the Buddh Circuit, where Formula 1 raced from 2011 to 2013.
Serious doubts hung over the race until it actually happened. The Hermann Tilkedesigned track works brilliantly for bikes and the crowd was keen and knowledgeable. The only real issue was the furnace-like heat.
Several teams ran temperature sensors in their cockpits (where riders tuck in behind the screen) and inside riders’ boots, which revealed riders were breathing air at over 50°C, while their feet were slow-cooking at 60. No matter, the event was judged a great success, so Buddh will host MotoGP until at least 2029.
India’s motorcycle story began soon after independence in 1947, when Jawaharlal Nehru’s government decided its army and police needed machines. Almost a thousand 350cc Royal Enfield Bullets – manufactured in Redditch, Worcestershire – were imported. Soon, only the parts were imported, the machines assembled in Chennai (then Madras) by the newly formed Enfield of India, an Anglo-Indian partnership that perhaps signified the changing of the guard.
During the 1960s, as the British motorcycle industry collapsed under the weight of Japanese competition, Royal Enfield sold all its Bullet machine tools and jigs to Enfield of India.
For several decades Indian roads were ruled by mongrel Anglo-Indian machines, mostly Bullets and Morris Oxford cars. Like Enfield, Morri
