Royal Enfield Guerrilla 450, test, price, details – Presentation

“A member of a small, independent group that engages in irregular combat, usually against larger, regular forces.” That’s the answer Google provides when you type in the word “guerrilla” – a search that has surely gained popularity now that Royal Enfield has used it to name its latest motorcycle. It’s an apt name considering this is Royal Enfield’s attempt to infiltrate a segment it’s never been in. And it’ll do so with lower sales figures than usual.

RE has clearly adopted a fighting spirit with this bike, with the company deriding ‘plastic’ rivals and claiming that too many manufacturers seem to be making clones of other products. The latter criticism is well deserved given how much Honda’s new CB350 has been ‘inspired’ by the Classic 350…

Royal Enfield Guerrilla 450 Design and Features

With that kind of tone, it’s good that the Guerrilla has its own look and identity in its segment. You won’t mistake this motorcycle for any other modern retro, though there is a clear design identity shared with its big brother, the Himalayan. The sculpted fuel tank extrusions and the sleek tail section are particularly reminiscent of the Himalayan and in a good way. There’s also the same round LED headlamp, blacked-out Sherpa 450 engine and short exhaust. The Guerrilla also gets the biggest front and rear tyres (120/70R17 and 160/60/R17) of any motorcycle made in India, which adds to the visual appeal.

Thankfully, the Guerrilla is a clear departure from the Himalayan in terms of accessibility. At 780mm, this bike has the lowest seat in the segment and has lost all the heaviness of the ADV’s top end. At 185kg, it’s the heaviest bike in the 300-400cc liquid-cooled roadster segment, but it’s not a heavy bike in general. Lifting it off the side stand is easy, and its weight seems about right for the size of the bike.

Size is a major advantage of the Guerrilla over most of its rivals. Based on the Himalayan chassis, it is a bike that feels spacious and that will work in its favour. The fuel tank feels quite large despite its capacity of only 11 litres and even with those styling extrusions on the side, there is no interference where your knees meet the tank.

Despite the low seat height, the riding position is very well thought out and even tall riders won’t find it immediately uncomfortable. With 30mm raised footpegs, tall riders will eventually experience knee pain, but the bike was quite comfortable for the first few hours of our ride.
The handlebar placement is very natural, allowing for a comfortable and upright riding position, but still giving you a good connection with the bike when riding at a faster pace.

Royal Enfield Guerrilla 450 Performance and Handling

We were lucky enough to ride some beautiful roads outside of Barcelona and the Guerrilla was a real treat in that environment. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given that the Himalayan itself is a surprisingly good handling bike and the Guerrilla platform only builds on that. It has the same mainframe as the Himalayan but with a much steeper fork angle. Suspension travel has also been reduced from 200mm at both ends to 140mm at the front and 150mm at the rear. The biggest change though is the move to 17-inch wheels at both ends.

With its big knobby Ceat tyres you might think this bike has scrambler capabilities, but like the Ducati Scrambler it’s all about looks and the Guerrilla is very much a roadster. That said it does behave very much like a roadster. The handling can best be described as neutral, predictable and encouraging. The Guerrilla leans over quite a bit before scraping its pegs and the Ceat tyres work remarkably well in terms of grip. The tyre profile gives a slightly artificial feel as you explore the outer limits of the available lean angle and the Guerrilla will probably be even more fun with more conventional road tyres.

The braking system is very similar to the Himalayan, except for a slightly smaller 310mm disc. Braking performance is more than adequate, although it’s not the sharpest system on the market. Dual-channel ABS is standard, but unlike the Himalayan, the rear can’t be switched off. Spanish roads are probably the worst place to try to gauge suspension comfort, but I suspect the rear shock is on the firm side. Hopefully this bike will do better than the Hunter in this regard on our roads, and have enough travel on its side, but it’s something we want to gauge here.

The Guerrilla uses the same 40hp/40Nm 452cc liquid-cooled engine as the Himalayan, with a slightly different tune aimed at spicing up low- to mid-range performance. The bike also gets a smaller rear sprocket (by two teeth) to compensate for the smaller wheel/tyre diameter compared to the Himalayan.

On the move, the engine feels very similar in that it wants to be above 3,000rpm at which point it lunges forward strongly. The engine is happy to rev all the way to the redline and that adds to the riding pleasure of this bike. If anything, the 11kg weight loss over the Himalayan makes the Guerrilla feel a little quicker and we should be looking at a 0-100kmph time in the low 6-second range. As with the Himalayan, there are varying degrees of vibration at different speeds and how this manifests itself at highway cruising speeds is something we can report on once we ride the bike in India. If you plan on doing a lot of highway touring, this bike has more than enough performance and space (a very high payload of 191kg too) but the 11-litre fuel tank will mean frequent fuel stops.

Royal Enfield Guerrilla 450: verdict

The Guerrilla 450 comes in three variants, with the base bike getting the Super Meteor’s semi-digital display. The mid- and top-end variants get the same TFT display as the Himalayan along with exclusive colour schemes. In terms of features, this is a relatively barebones bike with no traction control or quickshifter. But like the Himalayan, you do get a USB charging port and the ability to stream maps from your phone to the TFT display. Also, like the Himalayan, you have to keep your phone’s screen on to facilitate this, which while far from ideal, does avoid the risk of having to mount your phone to the handlebars.

The Guerilla 450 is an attractive and fun-to-ride roadster, but it doesn’t bring anything truly unique or revolutionary to the table. The same goes for its price tag (Rs 2.39 lakhs to Rs 2.54 lakhs), which is significantly lower than the KTM 390 and Husqvarna 401, but a tad higher than the Triumph Speed ​​400. While we are yet to see how the Guerilla fares in India, it has already proven to be something you should consider if you are in the market for a modern roadster.

See also: Royal Enfield Guerrilla 450 review: on the offensive