New safety regulations will be enforced soon by the Indian Government, from the first of April this year. As a part of these new rules, manufacturers will have to provide an ABS system as standard on their bikes if they have a capacity of more than 125 cc. Many manufacturers have already started offering ABS variants of their popular bikes and the Royal Enfield Classic 350 is the latest entry in that list. The Indian manufacturer will also provide its Classic 350 model with a dual channel ABS system for INR 1,53,245 (ex-showroom, Delhi). Compared to the standard model, which is priced at INR 1,47,464, Royal Enfield is offering dual channel ABS for only an extra INR 5,781 for this crucial safety feature.
This price difference is very less when compared to other bikes which benefitted from this safety aid. It seems that Royal Enfield may have taken a hit in their profit share to keep the price aggressive enough to compete with the newly launched Jawa motorcycles, which also offer dual-channel ABS as an option. Apart from the additional ABS mechanism, no other changes will be made to the bike. The ABS module on this bike will not offer an option of being switchable and will be governed by the 280 mm disc in the front and a 240 mm disc at the rear. A Scrambler-like Trials version of the Classic range is nearly ready and should be launched in the coming months.
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As mentioned above, there are no mechanical changes done to the bike apart from the additional ABS hardware. The Classic 350 will continue to use the 346 cc, air-cooled, twin spark, single cylinder engine which is mated to a 5-speed gearbox. This engine is rated to produce 19.8 bhp at 5,250 rpm and 28 Nm of torque at 4,000 rpm. The engine sits in a single downtube chassis which is suspended by 35 mm, telescopic forks in the front and twin gas charged shock absorbers at the rear which comes with 5-steps of adjustment. This bike will be facing some fierce competition from the newly launched Jawa in the Indian market which is priced at INR 1,72,942 (ex-showroom, Delhi) when equipped with dual channel ABS.