Royal Enfield will be launching the Meteor 350 by end of June 2020. The motorcycle will debut a brand new 350cc engine and platform from Royal Enfield and it is expected to be priced around Rs 1.68 lakh.
Royal Enfield is soon going to be in the news a lot more frequently. The Chennai based motorcycle manufacturer is going on a product offensive strategy which will see them launching a new motorcycle every three months for the next three to four years. This will be kick started with the launch of the new Royal Enfield Meteor 350 which would have been already launched in the market if not for the COVID-19 crisis. However, in an interview with carandbike, Royal Enfield CEO, Vinod Dasari has now said the the Meteor 350 will see its market launch by end of June, 2020.
The new Royal Enfield Meteor 350 is coming as a replacement for the Thunder 350 family. Its not just a change of the name but the Meteor 350 has been completely redesigned from grounds up. It sits on a brand new platform with a brand new 350cc engine and it is expected to be a new benchmark for Royal Enfield 350cc engines. Royal Enfield claims that the Meteor 350 will come much improved ride quality and the engine will also be much more refined with a more sprightly performance as well.
While the Thunderbird 350 was based on a single-downtube frame, the new Meteor 350 uses a double cradle chassis. We believe Royal Enfield has developed this new chassis with the help of Harris Performance, which is the company’s performance partner, who has incidentally also helped develop the chassis for the 650 twins. In terms of styling however, the Meteor 350 looks largely similar to the Thunderbird 350X. The fuel tank, side panels and even the fenders look a lot similar to the now discontinued Thunderbird 350X. The headlights however are completely new. Also, the Thunderbird 350X always had a very likeable design and its no bad thing that the new Meteor 350 also looks largely similar.
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Royal Enfield hasn’t revealed much technical details about the new 350cc engines. This new engine will however come with overhead cams instead of Royal Enfield’s traditional push rod technology. It will also feature counterbalancers and we expect the new engine to be free-revving with a smooth and refined performance, in essence, like a downsized version of the 650cc parallel-twin engine. The new Meteor 350 is also expected to come with a semi-digital instrument cluster and even Bluetooth connectivity.
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This new platform will also be a modular architecture which means the same platform and engine-gearbox combination will be able to serve several new models and variants. Royal Enfield also intends to offer a very extensive factory-level customization and personalisation options with all their new motorcycle and that is something to really look forward to in our opinion. A previous leaked image of the new Meteor 350 had revealed that the motorcycle could be priced at around Rs 1.68 lakh, ex-showroom. That still might be an arbitrary figure but you can expect the price to range near about the same mark.
