New Royal Enfield Meteor 350 Variant With Spoke Wheels Incoming?

Quite literally, we seem to be getting new spy pictures of various upcoming Royal Enfield motorcycles every other day, be it the Himalayan 450, where you can hear its exhaust note, or the Shotgun 650. Now, it seems that Royal Enfield is testing a variant of the Meteor 350, the Chennai-based company’s first J-series motorcycle and the replacement for the venerable Thunderbird.

Coming to these spy pictures of the Meteor, first of all, there don’t seem to be any drastic design changes. And we can infer that there won’t be any mechanical changes as well. It will still retain its 349cc air-cooled J-series engine that makes 20.4 PS and 27Nm. That said, unlike the blacked-out treatment the Meteor’s engine normally gets, this test mule has a silver-finished engine and crankcase (similar to what you get on the Classic 350). Also, the headlight nacelle has a chrome finish instead of black. Some people online are claiming that this headlight could be an LED unit, but there’s nothing in these spy pictures which indicates that.

This test mule can be seen in the bike’s top-of-the-line Supernova Brown shade (brown and black dual tone), but it’s missing its traditional tall windscreen and is running with black Touring Seats from the company’s accessories catalogue. And up at the cockpit, the Tripper navigation pod is notably absent. But the biggest visible change is the switch to wire-spoke wheels, unlike the Meteor 350’s stock black alloy wheels. The wheel sizes seem to be the same 19/17-inch as before, but these will definitely be clad with tubed tyres.

All this leads us to believe that going forward, you’ll either be able to kit out your Meteor 350 with wire-spoke wheels using the company’s MiY (Make it Yours) customization programme or pick up a more affordable version of the Meteor 350 that looks more retro than the standard bike - something like what you get with the Retro and Metro variants of the Hunter 350. That could also possibly mean that this version could come with a rear drum brake and single-channel ABS to keep costs down, but there’s no way to confirm that in these spy pictures.

Seeing as how it would take very little to get this variant into production, we expect it to hit showroom floors as early as June 2023. In theory, this could be about Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 more affordable than the standard Supernova variant of the Meteor 350.

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