Royal Enfield factory sidecar racer Oblin 1922 endurance race photo motorcycle

Description

A superb and rare photo of the Royal Enfield factory racer with Oblin in 1922 before the start of an endurance race at Marly!
Royal Enfield
was the brand of the Enfield Cycle Company, an English engineering company. Most famous for producing motorcycles, they also produced bicycles, lawnmowers, stationary engines, and even rifle parts for the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield Lock. This legacy of weapons manufacture is reflected in the logo, a cannon, and their motto "Made like a gun, goes like a bullet". It also enabled the use of the brand name Royal Enfield from 1890. In 1955 Enfield of India started assembling Bullet motorcycles under licence from
UK
components, and by 1962 were manufacturing complete bikes. The original
Redditch
, Worcestershire-based company dissolved in 1970, but Enfield of India, based in Chennai, continued, and bought the rights to the Royal Enfield name in 1995. Royal
Enfield
production continues, and now Royal Enfield is considered the oldest motorcycle model in the world still in production and Bullet is the longest production run model. About 1890, Townsend got himself into a bit of financial trouble. He called in some financiers from
Birmingham
, but they didn't quite see eye to eye so Townsend parted ways with the financiers leaving the company to them. The financiers then appointed R. W. Smith & Albert Eadie to take control of Townsend's in November 1891. The following year the company was rechristened as "The Eadie Manufacturing Company Ltd". Soon, Albert Eadie got a profitable contract to supply precision rifle parts to the Royal Small Arms Factory in
Enfield
, Middlesex. To celebrate the contract, Eadie and Smith decided to call their new design of bicycle the "
Enfield
". A new company was created to market these new design bicycles called "The Enfield Manufacturing
Co.
Ltd", in October 1892. The next year, the word "Royal" (after the Royal Small Arms Factory) was added to the company name and thus the Royal Enfield began. Their trademark, "Made Like A Gun" appeared in 1893. The first automotive vehicles with the Royal Enfield name were produced in 1898 - a quadricycle with a De Dion-Bouton 2.75 hp engine. This appears to be the first motorised example of what we now refer to as "ATV's" or "Quad's". In 1901 came the Motor Bicycle with a 150 cc 1.5 hp (1 kW) engine above the front wheel. In 1902 a similar contraption appeared with an
Enfield
engine of 239 cc 2.75 hp (2 kW). In 1910 came the first of the famous
Enfield
V-twins, first with Motosacoche 344 cc 2.75 hp (2 kW) engines, later with
Enfield
's own engine. Until World War I the big twins with 770 cc six hp J.A.P. engines and after WWI 976 cc eight hp Vickers-Wolseley engines. In 1915 came the first of the small two stroke 225 cc engines, starting with model 200. The company merged with Alldays & Onions in 1907 and produced cars called Enfield-Allday until 1925. The First World War began in 1914. Royal
Enfield
was called on to supply motorcycles to the British war department and even awarded a contract to build bikes for the Imperial Russian Government during the same period. The machine gun combination and the 6 hp (4.5 kW) stretcher-carrying outfit were some of the models produced for the war purpose.
Enfield
started using its own engines, a 225 cc two-stroke single and a 425 cc V-twin about this time. In 1917, the officers of the woman's police force were issued with a 2.1 RE 2 stroke. The models of this period featured 600 cc, inlet-over-exhaust closed valve gear, hand operated oil pump, two speed countershaft gearbox and chain final drive.
This is a very nice and very
non period
rare photo that reflects a wonderful era of motorcycle history in a wonderful way. This is your rare chance to own this photo, therefore it is printed in a nice large format of ca. 8" x 12" (ca. 20 x 30 cm). It makes it perfectly suitable for framing!
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