After many years in a private collection, this beautifully restored 1952 Royal Enfield Bullet has surfaced to find a new home. Spectacularly restored 20 years ago at the cost of more than $8,000 the present owner purchased the bike off of the showroom floor at Mean Marshall's in 1993! Although not run in many years, it has been consistently registered and insured in California and has current tags today.
This 500cc thumper served as the prototype for the eventual Indian Woodsman that was marketed by Indian starting in 1955. Though by that time it had lost its cool lightweight alloy fenders and the gorgeous alloy headlight nacelle.
Many Art Deco designs and lines can be found in this very cool old machine. The colors, polished alloy cases and especially the striped chrome rims really set this bike apart from a lot of the other bikes that one sees on display in your typical retail window, restaurant, or living room. With the economy doing what it has been doing, old vehicles are proving to be one of the more safer investments while providing wonderful eye candy in the interim.
Posting update: September 16, 2011 Wow, what a tool the internet is! In the past 18 hours we have learned so much more about this bike it is amazing! The owner of the U.S. Royal Enfield Blog called us and subsequently put us in touch with the President of the U.K. Royal Enfield Owners Club who own most of the dispatch ledgers from the Royal Enfield factory in Redditch. It appears that this bike is more appropriately an Indian and not a Royal Enfield even though for all intents and purposes they are the same bike anyway since Indian was buying Royal Enfields and putting their own name on them and re-selling them as Indians. But I thought that it would be helpful to add the following additional history that has now surfaced as well: The frame number of 5T-4792 is actually an Indian Tomahawk frame for export to the U.S. that was dispatched on the 15th of December 1955, making this bike technically a 1956 and the engine number of Js15124 is from an Indian Woodsman 500cc engine dispatched on the 15th of February 1956.
These dates reflect when they went to the Brockhouse depot at West Bromwich in the U.K. and not when they actually left for the U.S. The Brockhouse Corporation had taken over Indian in the early 1950s terminating production of motorcycles at Springfield and they marketed Royal Enfields (and others) under the Indian brand name between 1955 and 1959. AMC then took over in 1960 selling their own Matchless machines using Indian model names, but not re-badged. They did, however, take 200 Royal Enfield Indian Chief models that year, presumably the remainder of a Brockhouse order they inherited. So, in a way I guess what you have before you is a '1956 Indian Woodshawk' and as often happens with old motorcycles the titling paperwork won't support that at this point in time but, if one wanted to do battle with the DMV I suppose you could provide the appropriate copies of the documentation in England to get the DMV to update the records to reflect the Indian brand.
Since the Indians were just re-badged Royal Enfields anyway the paperwork detail and/or tank decal update would be an ego thing! But, for now the title reflects a 1952 build year and a Royal branding. Now, since you know the rest of the story, you would technically own an Indian motorcycle! September 20th UPDATE!!! Today put in fresh gas and it started perfectly on the second kick!! Went right to a beautiful idle and once warmed up, wonderful!! This is truly one very fine machine!
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