For reasons we haven’t fully been able to understand, there has been a lot buzz lately about the new Himalayan model from Royal Enfield, the Indian company’s foray into the ADV market.

The premise might seem obvious enough, a small-displacement (410cc) adventure-tourer that is supposed to be cheap, rugged, and easy to work on.

There has always been a trade-off to make in buying a Royal Enfield though, with the “unique” charm of owning a motorcycle from the historic brand having to be balanced against its less than stellar reputation for quality and reliability.

While the idea of a simpler and easier adventure-tourer is certainly appealing to a demographic that is like to have to make repairs on the side of some single-track trail, it just seems you are just as likely to be making those repairs because something on the bike broke for no good reason. There’s a chicken and the egg thing going on somewhere here with this logic.

That being said, if you’re a brand that is try to tackle that very problem, it would probably be best not to show your rough and tumble ADV bike breaking when it is used on a modest of jump. Skip to 1:51 in the video, after the jump, and look for the right footpeg coming off during landing. Hrrm.