Royal Enfield wins big at the Bike Shed Festival with Custom Continental GT 650

After 54 years, Royal Enfield returned to the race track with two custom-built Continental GT 650 developed by Harris Performance, which is a unit of Eicher Motors Ltd. Christened as ‘Nought Tea GT version 2.0’, the newly developed motorcycles took home two Silvers and two Golds at the Bike Shed Festival held this weekend.

What’s special about the Nought Tea GT?

Harris Performance and Royal Enfield have taken this bike’s development very seriously. Starting off with a custom-built fairing to give the bike an edge over the competitors at the track, the team made sure that this is not just an off-the-shelf mod job.

Replacing the air box are two intake pipes neatly crafted, matching the custom-built dual exhausts. The subframe was chopped off to align it closely with the new handcrafted seat with the tail lamp integrated in the cowl.

The stock suspension and calipers were swapped for units from Ohlins and Brembo. Even the stock rims were ditched to make room for the new components and tyres. Harris has also plonked their custom yoke to shed weight and make room for the new clip-ons. To customized the rider position, the bikes get custom-made adjustable rearsets.

That’s not it. The Nought Tea GT gets a bored-out engine, complete with a 750cc S&S big bore kit. All these mods have helped the bike shed 18.5kg while gaining a 26 percent bump in power at the rear wheel!

Explaining on the development project, Neal Coope, Group Manager Genuine Motorcycle Accessories - Royal Enfield said, “Having kicked this off in August 2018 with the milestones of the project being both of the Bike Shed events this year, it is great to be in a position to see the bikes out on track. Working alongside Lester and the good folks at Harris Performance, as well as taking all of the learning from the Factory Custom build, we’ve put together two very track focused motorcycles to demonstrate the potential of the Continental GT 650. Prior to coming out for this weekend’s event we’ve been fortunate enough to get out at both Donington Park and Cadwell Park, where we might have ruffled the feathers of some bigger and more powerful motorcycles which is a credit to the bikes and all of the hours put in by the whole team. At this moment in time we are where we wanted to be, but we do know there is more to come from both the engine and the chassis from the results we’ve seen so far.”

With almost 60bhp available, and looks as classy as the Nought Tea GT, we can’t help but wonder if such a kit could be ever made available to us commoners.