This 200 MPG Motorcycle Was One Of The Only Mass-Produced Diesel Bikes In The World, And I Found One For Sale In America Shockingly Cheap

The words “diesel” and “motorcycle” are not often seen paired together. Diesel engines move the world, but they aren’t usually the choice for fun-loving motorcyclists. There have been a few exceptions in history, with one standing above the rest. The Royal Enfield Diesel was the most mass-produced diesel motorcycle in the world, known for trading performance for 200 mpg frugality. These weirdos were never sold in America, but there’s one for sale here right now for a tantalizingly low price.

Diesel engines are a relative rarity in the motorcycling world, and for good reason. Think about the people who ride motorcycles. Americans usually ride motorcycles for fun with a side benefit of getting to work. For everyone else, there’s over a century’s worth of highly economical gas engines and more recently, penny-pinching electric motors. Places like India and China have mastered the art of getting from A to B on two wheels for barely any money.

Historically, diesel engines are known for being heavy, bulky, shaky, and not particularly high-revving. Add the fact that diesel fuel itself can be more expensive than gasoline, and in the modern day, much more expensive than electricity, and diesel power for motorcycles seems even more unrealistic. Yet, weirdly, there have been a handful of times when diesel-powered motorcycles made at least a little sense.

I’ve written about so many obscure diesels: the HDT M1030M1 multi-fuel combat bike, the Boccardo 1200 Aéro Diesel commuter bike, the Star Twin Thunder Star 1200 TDI sport bike, the Axiom Diesel Cycles cruiser, the Hero RNT 150 TDi, and the Track T-800CDI adventure bike. The world is full of many more custom builds, like the Ebster 720 Diesel, which was built by a German man who was really into construction equipment. All of these motorcycles were built to serve an incredibly specific purpose, or in some cases, to prove a point. All of them went nowhere.

That is, except for one motorcycle, the one with the distinction of being the only diesel motorcycle in history to reach true mass-market status. For a period of about a decade or longer, Royal Enfield sold as many diesel motorcycles as there were riders to scoop them up. But the only reason why it worked was due to a specific set of circumstances in India at the time.

Why India Built Diesel Motorcycles

Sadly, while I frequently try to dig further into the history of the Royal Enfield Diesel, one detail remains extremely confusing.

Royal Enfield says it began production of the Diesel in 1993. However, it’s rather frequently reported in Indian enthusiast publications – DriveSpark is one example – that Royal Enfield actually started building diesels even earlier, in the late 1980s. It’s also extremely easy to find late-1980s Royal Enfield Diesels on India’s equivalent of Craigslist. These bikes often have the exact engines and graphics found in later Royal Enfield Diesel models.

One potential explanation I’ve seen is that, in the 1980s, India had a culture of shed builders who mounted diesel engines to brand-new Royal Enfield Bullets. Then, in 1993, Royal Enfield itself cut out the middleman by making its own diesels. That would explain why 1980s diesel Royal Enfields are plentiful, but it doesn’t explain how, coincidentally, the ’80s bikes often have the exact engines and designs of the later examples. Maybe one of these days I’ll be able to talk to someone who was involved in this project and get an answer once and for all.

Thankfully, I do know the details that matter most, and you can read the juicy details from my previous coverage:

When the Taurus was introduced, a Bullet 350 made about 18 horses from its 346cc four-stroke single. This was good for a top speed nearing 70 mph, depending heavily on conditions. Royal Enfield’s history page doesn’t say why the Diesel was put into production, but DriveSpark reports that it had to do with fuel prices at the time. Diesel was reportedly about half of the price of gasoline back then, making a diesel-powered bike compelling, even if the motorcycle was more expensive upfront.

Housed in the familiar Bullet frame is something different. The Taurus ditched spark ignition for a 325cc diesel single made by Greaves Lombardini in Italy. This air-cooled industrial engine is good for 6.5 HP and 10.7 lb-ft torque. As you could imagine, these are slow and top speed hovers around 49 mph. That makes its performance about on the level of a 110cc gas motorcycle. According to an owner’s manual that I found, these weigh in at a heavy 370 pounds as well.

In my continued research, I have discovered that the Indian government recognized two versions of Royal Enfield’s diesel Bullet. One is called the Enfield Diesel, while the other is called the Taurus. Both versions are the same, but have small visual differences.

According to the owner’s manual for the 1999 Enfield Diesel, the Greaves-Lombardini mill spins up to 3,950 RPM. The aforementioned peak power comes on at 3,600 RPM, right before you have to shift to the next gear, if one’s there. I say that because, in stock form, the paint shaker diesel will get the Enfield Diesel up to a blisteringly fast top speed of 49 mph. Also, the transmission has only four speeds. Financial Express Drives claimed that you’d be rewarded with a whopping 190 mpg to 211 mpg fuel economy.

As amazing as that fuel economy sounds, a 100cc gas-powered motorcycle from India today could hit roughly the same fuel economy numbers and go at roughly similar speeds. However, back in the 1990s? Getting 200 mpg out of a nominally middleweight motorcycle was a big deal, even if you weren’t getting anywhere fast.

The biggest reason why the Royal Enfield Taurus made sense was that diesel fuel was dirt-cheap in India in the 1990s. Riders were willing to give up gas engines and leave behind better performance to get around 200 mpg on a bike that was cheaper to fuel than an equivalent machine that burned gasoline. If your main goal was a daily rider that saved oodles of cash, and you didn’t care about ride comfort or having fun, the Royal Enfield Diesel was it.

Royal Enfield never released sales numbers, but the continued abundance of the bikes well after two decades past their discontinuance seems to suggest that loads of them were sold. Today, Indian bikers seem to look back on the Enfield Diesels with fondness.

So then, if they were so popular, what happened to them? Based on the reports I’ve found, two issues proved to be insurmountable. Eventually, the price of diesel fuel rose in India, eroding one of the bike’s primary benefits. Then, stricter emissions regulations shut the door on further production. It appears the last Enfield Diesels were made around the year 2000.

The glorious thing about this is that the entire production run of Royal Enfield Diesel and Taurus motorcycles is legal to import into America, and some do trickle through the border. Sadly, due to a dearth of specialist importers, getting vehicles to America from India isn’t nearly as easy as getting one from Japan or Europe. But some people do figure it out.

This Royal Enfield Diesel

That brings us to the 2005 Royal Enfield Diesel that’s for sale today in South Berwick, Maine.

I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw this motorcycle because, at first glance, it’s the Enfield Diesel I’ve been dreaming about for years. It appears to be in immaculate condition, and I cannot get over how agricultural the engine sounds. If this were a gas engine, I’d assume it was broken. But this sounds like a bucket of bolts by design! I’m also deeply amused that the thing shakes so much it’s basically trembling like a chihuahua. Harley guys would be jealous.

But, as many of our readers know, I am a detail-oriented person. It hit me that, wait, Royal Enfield didn’t build diesels in 2005. If it did, a 2005 model would still be too young to import into America.

Yet, this motorcycle does have a real Greaves-Lombardini engine. Specifically, this one is a Model 5520, which is a 325cc single with five horsepower at 3,600 RPM and 10.7 lb-ft of torque.

At the same time, the bike has a speedometer in mph and an odometer in miles. This bike is almost certainly a Royal Enfield Bullet turned into a replica Enfield Diesel, but I think that’s actually just fine!

Whoever built it paid very close attention to what they were doing. This Greaves-Lombardini engine makes almost the exact output of the Greaves-Lombardini that powers an Enfield Diesel. Likewise, this bike has the correct stickers from an Enfield Diesel. Amazingly, this one even has the old-school four-speed transmission with a right-foot shifter that has first gear up, and the other three gears down. Bullets of the mid-2000s often came with five-speed left-foot shifter transmissions.

The seller told me that he thinks that this was a Bullet that was sent back to India, converted to diesel, and then brought back to America. Really, this motorcycle should perform just like a factory-built Enfield Diesel! It even has drum brakes front and rear, for that authentic classic Royal Enfield experience of taking three business days to come to a stop.

It’s So Cheap

I’m also willing to give it a pass on authenticity because of the price. At the rock-bottom price of $2,950, I’m not sure you’ll ever find a cheaper diesel Royal Enfield in America. The Enfield Diesel I wrote about in 2023 sold for $12,500 on eBay; this is a fraction of that. I’m not even sure you’d find any other running Royal Enfield in good cosmetic condition for this price.

Sure, the motorcycle you get out of the other end will be so slow that you’ll be outrun by kids on electric scooters. The vibration will also be good enough to rearrange your internal organs. But with this bike’s three-gallon tank, it’ll probably go a whopping 500 miles between fuel stops.

You’ll also get a weird piece of motorcycling history. This is one of the few exceptions to the rule that companies just don’t build diesel-powered motorcycles. If you love dead-end tech like me, this is full of it.

Honestly, if this bike wasn’t an entire day’s drive away, I’d be making plans to pick it up right this second. If someone doesn’t buy it before me, I just might make the trek out to Maine to pick it up. It would be a great excuse to test out a Ford Maverick or some other small trucklet. Please stop me from doing that. Or don’t; my wife has already said yes.

Top graphic image: Facebook listing