Every Jetliner Ever Made: Concorde

Concorde, courtesy Pedro Aragão

Let's continue to have a look at Every Jetliner Ever Made, but with Airbus and Boeing at the end otherwise it would be boring. This week, the sweet sadness of Concorde, which is pronounced Con-cord, snip-snip, like a pair of scissors.

CONCORDE (Great Britain (with assistance from France))

Technically this should be under A for Aérospatiale, or perhaps B for BAC, but I'm going to put it under C for Concorde because there's nothing quite like Concorde. Except for the Tupolev Tu-144, which actually was quite like Concorde, and it came first, so technically Concorde was like the Tu-144. They were like each other. I'll start again.

Depending on your outlook Concorde was either the best airliner ever or a classic example of hubris, shortsightedness, the sunk-cost fallacy, the law of diminishing returns, lust, envy, not sloth. It was a four-engined, long-haul airliner with seating for around one hundred passengers in a 2+2 arrangement. Despite being aimed an exclusive market of business fliers and the wealthy, Concorde's inflight entertainment consisted entirely of a large display showing the aircraft's Mach number and altitude. And perhaps people-watching. There were no films, no seat-back screens, no onboard phones. Passengers had to stoop to navigate the cabin and the seats were more cramped than those on a modern-day premium economy flight.

But Concorde was fast. It flew higher and faster than any other airliner. An unusual consequence of the aircraft's speed meant that BA001, the scheduled flight from London to New York, took off at 10:30 GMT in London and landed at JFK Airport in New York an hour earlier, at 09:25 EST. No other airliner came close.

At a cruising altitude of 60,000 feet Concorde could maintain a speed of just over 1,300mph, twice the speed of sound, more than twice as fast as any other airliner in transatlantic service. There are apocryphal tales of Concorde's passengers sipping champagne while looking down at Boeing 747s as Concorde overtook them.

Concorde was developed in the 1960s and early 1970s by the British Aircraft Corporation, with help from our French friends at Aérospatiale. We let them design some of the unimportant components, such as the wings and the hydraulics and the control systems and the navigation equipment, minor stuff. We built the important parts, including the engines, and the name, and Brian Trubshaw, who was the chief test pilot and very, very British.

In the late 1950s the aviation industries of Britain and France independently came up with supersonic airliner concepts, but in a spirit of entente cordiale that's French and also a desire to save money it was decided that Concorde should be a joint Anglo-French project. The deal was signed by the governments of Harold MacMillan and Charles De Gaulle, who were both worried that their nations were lagging behind the United States, not just technologically but in terms of global power. They saw a future in which people flew around the world in American airliners while eating American food, and they were horrified. Furthermore Britain was haunted by the enormous what-if of the DeHavilland Comet, a potential world-beater laid low by a string of tragic crashes.

The French had the concept of short-ranged supersonic airliner that would have mostly flown pan-European routes. The British design was larger, and optimised for the longer-range transatlantic market, which turned out to be the right call. Britain has always looked across the ocean to the United States and the rest of the world, which is why Britain is Great Britain, and France is just "France" or "La France", but not "Great France", or "Plus Grand France".

As a gesture of goodwill we agreed to call the aircraft Concorde, with an e on the end, but not La Concorde because there are limits. On a political level Concorde was incredibly lucky. During its development Britain switched from Conservative to Labour to Conservative to Labour governments, but each of them had different reasons to support the aircraft. Harold MacMillan wanted to retain Britain's seat at the top table; Harold Wilson's government was keen on the white heat of technology; Edward Heath was all-in for Europe; and by the time Harold Wilson came to power again in the mid-1970s it was too late to back down, even though it was apparent that Concorde was never going to pay back its development costs.

In the late 1950s jet-powered aviation was still new and expensive. There was a widespread assumption that jet travel would continue to be expensive, and that supersonic travel would be the next big thing, but as development of Concorde proceeded it became apparent that both of those ideas were wrong. Supersonic airflow is inherently high-drag, which meant that Concorde would always have a higher price-per-passenger-mile than its subsonic competition. Furthermore the aircraft's inflexibility made it unusually sensitive to the price of oil, and its complicated systems meant that only a small number of airlines could afford to operate it.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Lockheed and Boeing also came up with designs for supersonic airliners, but the two companies were unable to make the numbers work, and the US government was considerably less interested in the idea. There's a narrative in the UK that the United States failed to develop a supersonic airliner because they did not have our genius, and out of spite they went on to sabotage Concorde's commercial prospects, but that's not true.

A mockup of Lockheed's SST, the Lockheed L-2000

In the mid-1960s the US government conducted a series of tests over the continental US to find out whether sonic booms would damage infrastructure on the ground. The government flew B-58 bombers over Oklahoma and measured the results. The damage was less severe than anticipated, but the tests coincided with the dawn of the environmental movement. The key problem with the US SST was that, for it to make commercial sense, it had to fly domestic routes over the continental US landmass, which became impossible in the face of public opposition to sonic booms. US government funding was cut in 1971, but the US SST programme was already dead by that point.

Concorde's first prototype took to the air in 1969, with its first transatlantic flight following in 1973. It eventually entered commercial service in 1976, with BA flying London-Bahrain, and then London-Washington, and Air France flying Paris-Rio, with a fuel stop in Dakar. Despite the stopover the Paris-Rio route took only seven hours, versus eleven and a half nowadays. One destination that initially played hard to get was New York, where the mayor refused to give the aircraft a flight permit. That was apparently a New York thing rather than a United States thing, and so in 1977 the US government told New York to knock it off. From that point onwards New York became the most popular destination for both BA and Air France, with daily flights from Paris and London.

New York in the twentieth century

The Soviet Union also developed a supersonic airliner, the Tu-144, which was slightly larger and slightly faster than Concorde. It entered service in 1975, but it was never fully debugged and only conducted a few dozen commercial flights before being mothballed. It was a clever design in some respects - it used canard foreplanes to reduce the landing speed, which allowed it to use a wider range of runways than Concorde - but the entire concept was antithetical to the Soviet viewpoint and so it ended up as a prestigious publicity stunt.

The Tu-144 had one other thing in common with Concorde. They were both flying adverts for an economic system, but whereas the Tu-144 did nothing to make Communism look attractive the Concorde was aspirational. Never mind the waste. The average man and woman in the street liked Concorde and dreamed of flying it some day. On the ground, with the nose drooping down, it was a futuristic swan. In the air it was a gleaming paper dart. The only people who disliked Concorde were unattractive Trotskyites, which was ironic given that Tony Benn was one of the aircraft's biggest fans. And also economists, and airlines. They disliked it as well. Yes, technically Concorde was an awful advert for capitalism, but come on. Isn't that the thing about capitalism? It's horrible, but it's sexy. That is the world we live in.

On a purely pragmatic level Concorde wasn't a great success. Its afterburning turbojets were extremely inefficient at subsonic speeds. Concorde regularly flew non-stop from London to New York, but it could never have flown from New York to Los Angeles. On paper the subsonic range of circa 3,200 miles could have covered that distance, but the need to carry extra fuel in case of poor weather or an airport emergency would have necessitated a fuel stop, which would have defeated the point of a high-speed airliner. That, combined with generally high engine noise, put paid to any attempts to sell it to the US domestic market. The hot and high conditions in many airports in sub-saharan Africa meant that Concorde flights to that continent were intermittent, again requiring refuelling stops.

The shorter journey times were attractive, but there were only so many multimillionaires and corporate CEOs who absolutely needed to cross the Atlantic in three hours, and neither BA nor Air France attempted to run more than one transatlantic flight per day, which might have made the economics more favourable. Putting on my businessperson's hat, it strikes me that an eight-hour flight with a large folding table where I could do some work, or even catch up on sleep, would have been more attractive than three hours sitting in a cramped seat trying to read Bright Lights, Big City. And although Concorde's heyday predated the modern internet, by the 1990s it competed with fax machines and email, which nullified Concorde's speed advantage entirely. Ultimately there were only twenty Concordes, seven for British Airways, seven for Air France, two prototypes, and two test hacks.

Throughout its commercial life seat prices on Concorde varied widely, ranging from from £5000-13000 or so for a transatlantic flight depending on the deal. Towards the end of service prices dipped as low as £4000 one-way, and it was common for passengers to book a one-way ticket across the Atlantic on Concorde with a return on another airliner. Air France and British Airways both ran their aircraft with a single seat class unique to Concorde, with special Concorde-only lounges at Heathrow and Charles De Gaulle. Heathrow's Concorde lounge still exists, complete with a Concorde nosecone as a floor display.

Concorde's two main operators were British Airways and Air France, but a couple of other airlines briefly used the aircraft. From 1979-1980 Braniff Airways of the United States offered a service whereby passengers were flown at subsonic speeds on a Braniff-operated Concorde from Dallas, Texas, to Washington DC, at which point a British Airways or Air France crew took over and ferried the passengers on to London. The flight from Dallas to Washington was limited to Mach 0.95, although there are rumours that pilots accidentally broke the sound barrier while over unpopulated areas. Publicity drawings show the aircraft painted in orange Braniff livery, but apparently in real life it retained its original paintwork.

The internet gives various figures for the percentage of seats that had to be sold for a Concorde flight to make a profit, anything from 30-50%, but presumably Braniff's subsonic leg would have required even more passengers than that, and in the end no other US carrier operated the airliner.

In 1977, and from 1979-1980, British Airways and Singapore Airlines don't get those two mixed up came to a deal whereby the two airlines jointly operated a Concorde from London, to Bahrain, and on to Singapore. It was painted with Singapore Airlines livery on the left side. The arrangement did not run smoothly. The two companies had considerable difficulty persuading the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia to allow Concorde to overfly their territory, and the route had to take a circuitous approach from Bahrain to Singapore, swinging out into the Arabian sea, avoiding India and Sri Lanka. Despite a one-hour stop in Bahrain for fuel the total flight time was just over nine hours, which compares with non-stop flight times of around thirteen hours nowadays, but the thought of sitting in one of Concorde's cramped seats for nine hours sounds like torture.

One Concorde was built for Iran Air, who placed an order in 1972. The Iranian Revolution put paid to that, and the order was formally cancelled in 1980, at which point the airframe was sold to British Airways. Londoners of a certain vintage might remember Iran Air's offices in Piccadilly, just opposite The Ritz, which for a long time had a model of an Iran Air Concorde in the window. Sadly the Google Street View car arrived too late to capture it:

Concorde made a small profit for both BA and Air France, but this was only because the governments of Britain and France had written off the development costs and sold the aircraft to the airlines at far below their market value. Even then the margins were thin, nowhere near enough to fund a second generation of Concorde or even to upgrade or replace elements of the existing airframes.

There were tentative plans to enlarge the wing, increase the fuel tankage, and update the engines, all of which came to nothing. As the airframes rolled off the production line minor changes were implemented, but Concorde was never stretched or re-engined. By the 2000s the analogue cockpit was out of date, and it was the last aircraft in BA service with a dedicated flight engineer.

Incidentally the flight engineer had to shift the aircraft's fuel back and forth to ensure that it was correctly trimmed for level flight. In the event of an in-flight engine failure the engineer also had the unenviable job of trying to restart an afterburning turbojet at supersonic speeds, which can't have been easy.

Concorde had one fatal accident, in July 2000. During take-off an Air France Concorde bound from Paris to New York overran some runway debris, which bounced up into the fuselage and punctured one of the fuel tanks. The fuel ignited, and in the resulting crash all 109 people aboard the aircraft were killed, along with four people on the ground. Concorde was grounded immediately.

After reinforcing the tyres and fuel tanks BA and Air France conducted a series of test flights, culminating a final acceptance flight that took off at 10:30 GMT on the morning of 11 September 2001. It was in the air as the 9/11 attacks took place, and by the time it landed commercial aviation had been suspended in North America. BA and Air France continued to offer flights until 2003, but Concorde was doomed. Over the course of its last years passenger loads increased dramatically, because "if not now, when". As of this writing the remaining airframes are museum pieces that will never fly again.

In the years since Concorde's retirement there have been several attempts to market supersonic airliners and business jets, but none of the companies involved have managed to make the economics work. The fastest commercial aircraft flying today are sub-orbital rocket planes designed to give a handful of paying passengers a taste of spaceflight.

On a cultural level the Concorde is in an odd place. The internet is largely written by Americans, but they did not dream of Concorde when they were young. Americans hate to lose. As far as the internet is concerned Concorde is a peculiar oddity from the distant past. In particular the angry middle-aged American men of Airliners.net absolutely hate it, because we beat them! Harold MacMillan and Charles De Gaulle beat them. At that one, narrow thing, we beat them. As far as they are concerned Concorde was a awful deathtrap, but we beat you, just this once, and you hate us for it. Which is understandable, because we really did beat you.

And that's Concorde. A heck of a thing. On the subject of commercial disasters and next episode of "every etc" will cover Convair and Dassault, who made aircraft that repeated many of Concorde's mistakes. In fact Dassault made an airliner that was even less popular than Concorde, which took some doing.

Royal Enfield Himalayan (BS4): The Slippery Union of Male and Female

Let's have a look at the Royal Enfield Himalayan, specifically the 2018-2020 BS4 model, because that's the one I have. There it is, in the picture up there. Look at all those pipes.

What does BS4 mean? It stands for Bharat Stage 4, and it's a set of Indian vehicle emissions standards analogous to Euro 4. Bharat is one of the Indian words for India. The Himalayan was available in BS3, BS4, and BS6 models, roughly 2016, 2018, and 2021 in that order. It was replaced in 2023 with a new 450cc Himalayan, but I'm going to talk about the original.

Depending on your outlook the original Himalayan is either a cult adventure legend, or a decent cheap adventure bike with some acceptable compromises, or a poor person's BMW 1250 GS, or an underpowered pile of cack. Critics damned its tractor-like engine and ludicrously short service intervals, fans praised the comfortable ride, and also the fact that for £4500-5000 it undercut the competition by around £1000.

Objectively the Himalayan has all kinds of issues, but on an emotional level it's appealing, and as the chaps from Fortnine pointed out in their video review of the closely-related Scram 411, it's not completely inept. The Himalayan was at the very least built from the ground up as an adventure bike, rather than a street bike with raised suspension, and the low-power-but-decent-torque engine is perfectly fine at modest speeds on bad roads.

What is an adventure bike? It's a motorbike designed to travel long distances on the road in relative comfort, and also go up and down poor-quality dirt tracks without getting bogged down, and maybe have a go at mud tracks every once in a while.

I live in the countryside of Southern England, land of the pothole, and the Himalayan fits well into that environment. I also commute with it, but if you live in London and plan to drive to work on a Himalayan you'll probably get sick of its size and poor acceleration. And if you live really far out in the countryside you'll worry whether it's going to start on a cold morning. In between those two extremes it makes a lot of sense.

The optional aluminium panniers will take an airline-sized backpack, although the mounting system - the bare metal blocks - tend to scrape the paint from the mounts. The panniers were an optional extra, costing around £700, but a lot of people bought them because they look great.

I haven't noticed any handling differences whatsoever with one, two, or no panniers. They're heavy, but percentage-wise they don't add much to the bike's overall weight. The chances of a heavily-laden, pannier-equipped Himalayan exceeding 70mph are quite small.

The Himalayan has a following. In particular there's a large selection of aftermarket parts, so if you enjoy tinkering, it's the bike for you. If you want a low-power-drain wiring loom or an extended mobile phone mount, knock yourself out. But it's also a cliché, if you're worried about that kind of thing.

There's the Itchy Boots factor. Itchy Boots is a popular motorcycling personality who runs a Youtube channel where she rides around the world on a motorcycle. For the first couple of years she rode a Royal Enfield Himalayan. It was a BS4 model, just like mine. She started in India - which is why she bought a Himalayan - then moved to Malaysia, Iran, Oman, eventually Peru, at which point COVID intervened and she had to cut that trip short. She was a fantastic brand ambassador for the Himalayan, albeit that she paid for it with her own money and Royal Enfield didn't notice her until many years later.

But for every Itchy Boots there are two or three poorly-informed copycats who churn out boring multipart adventure vlogs with droning, badly-recorded dialogue. With a "himmy". If you plan to build a Youtube career around your adventures with a Himalayan, you're going to have to bring your A-game, because you'll be facing stiff competition.

This raises another point. Itchy Boots' videos are often cited as evidence of the Himalayan's toughness. But she bought her bike brand new, and although she subjected it to a tonne of abuse she kept up-to-date with the servicing, and she rode it every day and generally looked after it. I mention this because the BS4 apparently has a problem with passive battery drain whenever the bike is left standing for a while. If you're going to buy a Himalayan on the used market, try to get one with a full service history and preferably a dealer warranty. Some of the electrical issues that plague the model seem to kick in after a few years, by which time the original factory battery will have started to wear down.

There's some debate on the internet as to whether the upper mudguard - the beak - is superfluous, or if it helps direct airflow onto the engine.

On a physical level the bike attracted negative press in the early days after a series of photos emerged of a BS3 model with a snapped headstock, which left the front wheel bent forward as if it was a customised chopper. Royal Enfield apparently revised the welding in 2020, and although I can find a rash of forum threads about snapped headstocks, they all seem to be talking about the same couple of bikes.

Quite infamously a footpeg fell off in one of the Himalayan's promotional videos, at 02:32 here, although Royal Enfield seems to have edited that out. I bought my bike used, at the 14,000-mile mark, and although I only have a sample size of one I haven't noticed any obvious mechanical defects. The paint could be tougher and some of the screws have started to rust, but the bike has not yet snapped in half.

Originally the Himalayan was purpose-built for the Indian market, at a time when Royal Enfield was started to put its serious hat on. The BS3 model was released in 2016. The original version had carburettors rather than fuel injection, because Royal Enfield believed that carburettors would be easier to fix in rural India if something went wrong.

I've never driven in India. I've never even been to India. It's a difficult holiday destination - a country with the size and diversity of a continent. A lot of people in India speak English, but they have made the language their own, with "prepone" and "do the needful". I would need to spend months exploring the place, but where would I go? I have however seen videos of people riding motorbikes in India, such as this clip of a chap riding in New Delhi:

In the words of Rudyard Kipling, if you can ride a motorcycle through Delhi, my son, you will leave the cinema walking tall and women will desire you. I'm not sure if Rudyard Kipling said those exact words, but that's basically what he meant.

The point is that roads in India tend to be challenging and speeds are slow, so the Himalayan makes perfect sense in its natural environment. It's big and tall, with a commanding view. The 411cc long-stroke engine generates a decent amount of torque at low revs. It's air-cooled, and after ten minutes of driving I can feel my legs getting warm, which is a pleasant sensation because it means that the bike has warmed up.

The oil cooler is hidden behind this guard, which I think was installed by the previous owner.

With only 24bhp it struggles to go much faster than 75mph, but that's not an issue on the overcrowded streets of Delhi or on poor-quality rural roads in southern England. One issue however is rainproofing. Access to the Himalayan's battery terminals is through the saddles:

A lesser bike would have a rainproof cover over the electrics, but the Himalayan is better than that. As you can see the only thing stopping water dripping in from the rear, and dripping down into the electronics, is a foam block that's visible just next to the little green terminal. This block isn't even fixed in place, so I make sure to put a cover on the bike when it rains. Note how the paint on the fuel tank has been discoloured from water pooling around the front edge of the saddle. Towards the front of the bike a couple of cables have rubbed some paint off the front of the fuel tank, and as mentioned the metal blocks that hold the panniers in place have rubbed the paint off the pannier mounts.

There are a couple of mods that owners like to do. I've replaced the battery with a brand-new Motobatt MBTX9U from these fellows here NB I have no commercial relation with them and I don't make money from that link, it's just that I bought it from them and they delivered it and it worked.

The original Royal Enfield battery was four years old and didn't keep a high charge any more. One issue with this generation of Himalayan is a mysterious parasitic power draw that apparently flattens the battery if the bike is left standing for a few weeks, which is awkward if you park the bike outside.

Also pictured above are the two relays towards the bottom-right of the battery. They're filled with a white, water-repelling substance, lots of it. I've replaced one of the relays with a Bosch 0332201107, using a mixture of electrical contact cleaner and dielectric grease. But not the other relay, because it seems to be jammed solid, and it's awkward to reach.

The other upgrade I've performed is the spark plug, which I replaced with an NGK CR8EIX iridium spark plug. I had to unscrew the two screws holding the fuel tank in place (pictured above) and prop the tank up slightly to leave enough space for the plug, although thankfully I didn't have to take the tank off.

The original plug had seen better days:

Why did I do all of this? Partially because I've never changed a spark plug, a battery, or a relay before, and I wanted to find out how. But mainly because my bike has an odd quirk. I have to start it twice. The first time it roars into life... and then dies. The second time, it roars into life and then idles, although it's a very low idle, and I have to let it warm up. This is apparently a common issue with this generation of bike. The fuel injection system is primitive, and it's set up to burn lean in order to pass European emissions laws, and the large, air-cooled engine takes a while to get up to operating temperature.

Did any of these additions change anything? The battery definitely makes the bike start harder. The spark plug and relay made no difference, but they didn't hurt either. Another popular mod involves opening up the dashboard and popping in a moisture-absorbing sachet, because the instruments tend to fog up slightly.

Unusually the BS4 Himalayan has a choke:

It's the control with the long white arrow underneath it. It's not actually a choke, it just increases the idling RPM to 2000rpm or so. Frustratingly it's spring-loaded, so I have to sit on the bike holding the switch towards me for a minute before driving off. The post-BS4 models did away with this and presumably just modified the engine management firmware to idle the bike faster after starting up.

History

The original, carburetted BS3 model was launched in India in 2016. In 2018 Enfield upgraded the emissions system to meet BS4 / Euro 4 standards and launched the bike internationally. They also swapped the carburettors for fuel injection and added ABS. Here's what the dashboard of my BS4 model looks like:

The original, BS3 model only had five lights on the dashboard (turn, turn, neutral, battery, and high beam). The BS4 model has ABS and engine management warning lights as well. The LCD in the bottom-right is a compass. Is it accurate? I have no idea. I haven't formally tested it. I'm generally too busy looking at the road.

In late 2020 Enfield upgraded the bike again, to meet India's new BS6 emissions standards, which are similar to Euro 5. Visually the upgrade included some subtle changes to the exhaust system, fuel tank geometry, and front crash bars. For 2021 Enfield added a dial to the dashboard for the company's Tripper navigation system, which pairs with a mobile phone. This happened rapidly after the move to BS6, but there are apparently BS6 bikes with BS4 components.

The Himalayan was formally discontinued in November 2023, making way for a completely new replacement, the Himalayan 450, but in practice BS6 Himalayans remained on sale brand new for several months afterwards, as dealers sold off their stock. By all accounts the later the Himalayan the better the build quality.

In 2022 Royal Enfield also launched the Scram 411, which is essentially a BS6 Himalayan with a revised front end. The Himalayan has a 17" wheel at the back and a 21" wheel at the front, whereas the Scram has a 19" front wheel and a simpler dashboard. They are otherwise the same. The Scram is slightly lighter, and it can be modified into a mini-Himalayan - this owner has added a front screen:

The Scram's visual trademarks are the two panels that straddle each side of the fuel tank. They have ROYAL ENFIELD written on them. As far as I can tell they're just pieces of metal intended to cover up some screw holes. As of late 2024 the Scram 411 remains in production.

Performance

What's the Himalayan like to drive? Here's a video of me, driving the Himalayan in a circuit around Fovant, in Wiltshire:

I have very limited experience of riding motorcycles. I completed my CBT on a 50cc and then a 125cc automatic scooter. Then I spent six months riding around on a Peugeot Tweet 125cc automatic scooter, then six months on a Yamaha YS125 geared bike, and then a couple of weeks of absolute terror riding around cones on some kind of 650cc Kawasaki, with which I passed my test. But most of my riding has been on a Yamaha YS125, which I covered in a previous post.

The YS125 only has 10bhp, but it's small and light. In contrast my Himalayan has 24bhp, more than twice as much power, but it's a lot heavier - 199kg vs 120kg - so before testing it out I wondered if it would be more or less the same.

And in a way it is, but with an extra 20mph. Performance-wise the bike has a narrow rev range, centred around 4000rpm. That's when it sounds happiest and also produces the most torque. 2000rpm is borderline stalling and anything above 5000rpm sounds scary. Subjectively, the bike feels as if it wants to travel between 20mph and 50mph. Below 20mph I feel as if I'm just turning petrol into noise - it doesn't accelerate from a stop very well - and above 50mph I feel as if I have to push it. Just slightly at 60mph, but it feels as if it really wants to be going at 50mph. I suspect it would top out at around 70-75mph, perhaps more comfortably without the panniers.

On my bike at least 30mph is 3000rpm in third, 60mph is either 5000rpm in fourth, or 4000rpm in fifth. There's an odd gap between the two of first and the bottom of second, so in a 20mph zone I have to choose between roaring in first or chugging in second. But it will drive in first without lurching, perhaps because it's so heavy.

The engine sounds like a bucket of bolts, and it benefits enormously from warming up. If I don't warm it up properly it has an alarming habit of cutting out just as I start to apply throttle in first, apparently a common issue with the BS4 bikes because they run lean. In contrast my YS125 started on the button and didn't miss a beat in the 1500-or-so-miles I owned it. The YS125 would probably beat the Himalayan from 0-20mph, but it hits a brick wall at 50mph and struggles to go any faster. On the other hand acceleration in the Himalayan from 30mph to 50mph - as you might experience when leaving a village - is surprisingly peppy. That's where the bike seems to come into its own.

One big advantage of a heavy bike is that the Himalayan feels stable at A-road speeds. My YS125 tended to wobble in the wind. It tramlined when confronted with ruts in the road, and riding at 50-60mph was terrifying. However the Himalayan cuts through wind and glides over bumps and potholes without breaking stride, and as depicted in the video above riding at 50-60mph was actually quite fun.

Handling-wise it's surprisingly nimble. The turning circle is nothing to write home about, and moving the bike into a parking spot by hand is a pain - although there are plenty of grab handles - but I have no problem steering it around town. Getting on the bike when it has the panniers fitted is a fine art that involves some tricky leg gymnastics.

And it looks great, there is that. Mine has a Lake Blue paint scene that was introduced in 2020. Can I think of anything else? It costs around £10 to fill the tank from mostly empty to mostly full. Fuel economy is apparently around 80mpg, and the tank is apparently 15 litres, so that's coincidentally a range of around eighty Persian parasangs. Road tax is £84 on account of the 400cc+ engine, vs £55 for a 300cc Honda CRF300L or £25 for a 125cc. The panniers have tie-down rails, and when both are fitted they provide a large flat surface that encompasses the real seat. I mention this in case you need to transport a small television or a microwave oven or something. It could conceivably be done.

Overall the OG Himalayan is big, slow, ponderous, but stable on crap roads. It loves to travel between 20-50mph, but it will cruise at 60mph without complaint. As an off-road bike my hunch is that you'll grow tired of having to pick its 199kg weight up from the mud, and as an in-town commuter it's very big, and as mentioned there are all kinds of fiddly reliability issues - my suggestion is that you buy the latest BS6 model you can find - and objectively the Honda CRF300L is faster, more powerful, and better on dirt, but the Himalayan looks great and have a certain amount of cachet, so there is that.