Ride Review: Royal Enfield Bear 650

Royal Enfield has gone back to the 1960s for its latest bike – the Royal Enfield Bear 650 street scrambler. Our man Dowds went to Palm Springs in California to ride it last month.

There are lots of difficult jobs to do when you build a new bike. High-powered engines with no horrible exhaust emissions. Swoopy bodywork with gorgeous lines. Handling like the bike is on proverbial rails. Electronics smarter than Elon Musk (maybe not so hard depending on your view of him…) Then being able to sell it all, in a market that’s really not doing so well nowadays.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

But there’s another job that sounds simple but is actually quite tricky: coming up with a name for your new machine. Sure, you can do that dull letters-and-numbers thing, with lots of R’s, S’s and X’s to suggest raciness and sexiness. But a good, proper name for a bike? How many can you think of that haven’t already been used?

‘Bear’ is not, I confess, one that would come up particularly high on my personal list. What kind of bear? A grizzly or polar is very different from a koala (not actually a bear, we know!) or a moon.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

And while the ursine moniker is noble enough, there’s something a teeny bit shambling about bears when compared with other apex predators like the big cats, the sharks or the golden eagle.

But here we are, in California, for a one-day encounter with a two-wheeled bear – the Royal Enfield Bear 650. And it’s named after some genuine competition history, from more than 60 years ago, in a place called Big Bear Valley, north-east of Los Angeles.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

Here, near Big Bear City and Big Bear Reservoir, was a desert race called, yes, the Big Bear Run. Imagine a 150-mile, two-day Weston Beach Race and you’ll have some idea of what we’re talking about. This is where a 16-year-old racer called Eddie Mulder won the 1960 race on a chunky Royal Enfield Fury 500, against all the odds.

Mulder became an instant hero in the nascent American off-road rally race scene – and he’s here in California tonight, where Enfield is launching the new Bear 650 scrambler-style bike.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

I’m here too, after a day of travelling halfway across the world, and am keen to see what we’re riding tomorrow. Unveiled on stage is a smart-looking retro-styled scrambler, very much in the modern Royal Enfield vein, and clearly using the firm’s well-established 650 air-cooled motor and a steel tube frame.

There’s new longer-travel suspension, with a gold-anodised Showa USD fork, plus wire spoked wheels, dirt-style rubber and a two-into-one exhaust. There’s a hint of the Triumph Scrambler 1200 – but without the expensive super-premium parts: no aluminium swingarm, Öhlins suspension or sculpted high-level exhaust.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

The paintwork is spot-on though, with sweet colour schemes and deep glossy finish, while the rest of the bike also looks very well finished, with the exception of the low-slung black-finished silencer, which looks a bit agricultural.

Next day, we’re up bright and early – too effing early in fact, as my GMT-based body clock wakes me up at 3am after four hours of fitful rest. By the time we meet out front where the Bear 650s are lined up, I’m awake, but have the mild sickness of jet lag in my stomach. One more cup of coffee before we go settles things down a little, and I get ready to hop onto the Bear.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

It looks as good in the dawn light as it did on the stage with Eddie last night – though we’re on the less flash silver and black painted bikes, which are a little more sombre than the brighter hues (though the gold fork tubes glint beautifully in the low sun).

Throwing a leg over, shows a medium-tall seat height: 830mm is about my limit for getting both feet down, but I am cursed with a stumpy 30” inside leg measurement. The round LCD dashboard is an impressive unit, with a large round analogue dial display for revs, and central readouts for speed, gear, trip meters and the like.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

The switchgear has a premium feel, and a built-in USB-C charging socket is perfect for plugging my phone in on its handlebar mount. Wide-set bars position my gammy right wrist (an old dislocation injury) at a bit of a weird angle, but everything else feels spot-on.

Thumb the proverbial starter button and the familiar Enfield 650 270° parallel twin engine experience kicks off below. It’s a soft off-beat chuffing thanks to modern Euro 5+ exhaust regs but there’s a pleasant enough intake burp as you blip the throttle to warm the motor up. Everyone else is ready to go now, so we click into first and trundle out of the hotel car park, following the Royal Enfield test rider who’s leading us today.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

We’ve got a couple of hundred miles ahead of us today, taking in a bit of freeway, then heading up into the hills. We were supposed to be riding up at Big Bear, to tie in with the namesake race, but wildfires a few weeks previously ruled that out, and the Enfield team had to quickly move us further south, to the roads south of Palm Desert and into San Jacinto State Park.

Kicking off on the highway out of Palm Springs, there’s a pleasing feel to the Bear, with that 650 engine chuntering away underneath. It’s a sound little motor, with satisfying throttle response, a characterful power delivery, and smooth operation.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

What it doesn’t have is a lot of power: 46bhp on an open motorway, dicing with high-speed American commuter traffic, means you’re at a bit of a disadvantage. The fun part is that you’re pretty much flat-out all the time, but there’s not much left in the boiler room if you suddenly need to pile on more coal.

Add in the exposed riding position – there’s no wind protection worth mentioning – and you have a package that’s a bit of a chore when it comes to fast motorway miles.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

No huge surprise there of course, but it’s still a relief when we turn off and start to climb up into the hills. I sometimes forget just how mountainous California can be, and we’re soon into some properly twisty switchback roads. The Bear is working better here: the steering is natural and easy, with the 19” front wheel not affecting things too much.

There’s plenty of ground clearance, and you can lean over into the comfort zone of the MRF tyres easily enough. Those semi-knobbly hoops are working well in terms of grip – though the warm, dry Californian tarmac isn’t much of a challenge – but I’m not getting as much feedback as I’d like.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

As ever, when it comes to tyres, I’m a bit of an old conservative (with a small ‘c’) and like to see a big brand name on the sidewall, so to my mind the MRF fitments are a step down from the Pirellis which the 650s launched with back in 2018.

The engine is better here, zipping up and down the rev range nicely enough as you dip and dodge through the bends. You’re still slamming the twistgrip to 100% as fast as you can though, and when the air thins as we pick up a bit of altitude, and as the steep gradients increase, there’s a hint of labouring.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

You’re making progress, but it just underlines for me that an extra few ponies would make a big difference to the performance. The Bear is no lightweight at 214kg, making things even more of a slog when dragging up the bigger hills.

Get to the other side and start charging downhill, and it’s the other end which feels the strain. There’s just a single brake disc up front, and while it gets a ByBre caliper from the Brembo firm, it’s a basic twin-piston sliding design, fine for smaller dirt bikes, but a bit marginal for a bigger bike like this when the speed picks up.

As ever, I can understand a firm not prioritising peak power in the engine, but I can’t think of any reason not to fit good, strong, powerful brakes to every bike…

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

The last part of the chassis package to consider is the suspension. It’s nice-looking Showa kit, and the back end feels fine, with plush damping and good wheel control. The front feels a bit too firm though: I clip one or two cats eyes on the twisty mountain backroad, and the front wheel kicks savagely, unsettling the whole bike, as if the initial damping is too stiff.

It might also be a combination of the 19” wheel and the MRF tyres, but I wasn’t the only rider to mention it. Enfield staff reckoned there was some last-minute tweaking going into the production bikes (the launch bikes were all pre-production machines), so the final settings on retail machines might be a bit softer.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

Overall though, the Bear is good, easy fun on these roads. You’re never going particularly fast, so the blind panic that sometimes hits on a 150+bhp machine is absent (that might be a bad thing for you of course…) Once you adapt to the mild peak power and soft-ish brakes, you can have a proper hoot, slinging the Bear from bend to bend.

Later on, we pull off the asphalt for a brief ‘offroad’ session, which it’s fair to say wasn’t too challenging. We rode along a sandy dirt track for a few miles, and the Bear performed about as well as you’d expect. It’s too heavy for much more than a mild, dry, green lane, even if you swapped in the indifferent rubber for something with more serious intent, and both the ground clearance and suspension travel are also fairly marginal.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

Back on the roads, and we’re pulling into the hotel before we know it, parking up in a neat line. At the end of a great day’s riding, what to make of the Bear 650? On the upside, it’s a very good looking machine, and Enfield has nailed the fit and finish.

The switchgear, alloy castings, paint, chrome and overall quality is very good, especially for a budget bike (though I’d definitely want to swap the black exhaust for something prettier). The kit list is pretty scant though: no cruise control, quickshifter, ride-by-wire throttle, traction control, or any other rider aids, with just the smart LCD dash in terms of tech.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

That’s not such a downside with this kind of bike of course: 46bhp probably doesn’t need too much electronic taming. And for me that power figure, and the brakes, are the two areas where I’d really like to see more from the firm. An extra 15-20bhp would make a big difference to the feel of the motor, and another disc up front, or a stronger caliper, would sharpen the stopping up nicely.

But the best feature of the Bear is probably the price. Around £6,750 for a brand new, stylish, reliable middleweight bike is tempting stuff, and for many riders, especially in the UK, it’s exactly what they want.

Royal Enfield Bear 650
Royal Enfield Bear 650

It’s cheap enough to serve as a second bike as well – many owners park something like this up next to a £20k adventure tourer or superbike, as a soft cruising option for sunny days. And I won’t be surprised if the next tricky job for Royal Enfield will be getting enough of the Bear 650s into the country to satisfy the demand this year.

www.royalenfield.com

Bear 650 tech highlights

Chassis

The Bear has a frame loosely based on the Interceptor 650’s steel tube cradle design, but with reinforced bracing up near the steering head. That’s there to cope with forces from the new taller USD front fork. The chassis geometry has been modified too: the Bear gets a longer rear swingarm to handle offroad chores better, and the steering head angle is changed as well. The biggest visible mod to the frame is at the back of the seat unit though: the rear subframe loop now has a kicked-up section at the rear.

Engine

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and Enfield clearly thinks there’s nothing wrong with its trademark middleweight 650 twin. The 648cc parallel twin SOHC 4-valve air-cooled motor is basically the same as it was when launched back in 2018, with similar power – an A2-friendly 46bhp – and torque output. For this year, there are minor mods to provide Euro5+ emissions compliance, and the Enfield folks say the new two-into-one exhaust system improves bottom end torque.

Electronics

Enfield’s spec list is improving gradually: the Bear features LED lighting, a neat colour LCD dash with navigation and media connections, USB-C charging port, and a basic dual-channel ABS with switchable rear. That’s pretty much it: you get nothing in the way of traction control or rider power modes here.

Running gear

The Big-Piston front forks are unadjustable items from Show, with 130mm travel, and the 115mm-travel Showa twin-tube rear shocks come with preload adjustment only. There’s a solitary brake disc at each end, 320mm front and 270mm rear, which are paired with dirt-style twin-piston sliding calipers by Brembo’s Indian arm, ByBre.

Wheels/tyres

Tube-type wire-spoked wheels are shod with MRF (Madras Rubber Factory) Nylorex dirt-styled tyres. The front wheel is a 19-inch rim, for a tiny bit of extra dirt ability, without affecting road handling too much.

Colours

British buyers have the choice of the Petrol Green, Golden Shadow and Two Four Nine schemes (249 was Eddie Mulder’s race number in 1960). But the white/blue/orange and the black/yellow schemes are only available in other markets, sadly. We’re big fans of the black/yellow in particular which looked amazing in the Californian sunlight.

SPECS

Price: £6,749-£6,949, depending on colour

Engine: SOHC 4v, parallel twin, a/c, 648cc

Bore x stroke: 78×67.8mm

Compression ratio: 9.5:1

Carburation: fuel injection

Max power (claimed) 46bhp@7,150rpm

Max torque (claimed) 41.6ft lb@5,150rpm

Transmission: six speed gearbox, wet clutch, chain final drive

Frame: steel tube double cradle

Front suspension: 43mm USD Showa Big Piston front fork, non-adjustable

Rear suspension: steel swingarm, preload-adjustable Showa twin shocks

Brakes: single 320mm disc, twin-piston sliding axial-mount caliper (front), 270mm disc, twin-piston sliding caliper (rear), dual channel ABS, switchable on rear

Wheels/tyres: wire-spoke tube type, 100/90 19 front, 140/80 17 rear

Rake/trail: na°/na mm

Wheelbase: 1,460mm

Seat height: 830mm

Kerb weight: 214kg

Fuel capacity: 13.7 litres

Equipment: 4” round TFT LCD dash with Tripper sat nav and phone connection. LED lighting, USB-C charging socket, switchable ABS

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