Little ITALY
It’s been around forty years since I last swung a leg over a 250 as a teenager. That was my tatty old 1965 BSA C15 SS80, which got me to work and back most days before I stepped up to a Norton Model 77. I really can’t say I’ve ever looked back until very recently when this Royal Enfield came my way.
The 1965 Continental GT (Gran Turismo) represents the pinnacle of the unit construction 250’s lineage, produced from late 1956 until 1966. It’s easy to think, as I did, that it’s just a Crusader with some cosmetic bling bolted on. Rather, over a decade in production, the unit construction 250 was constantly being evolved and power rose from 13bhp to 20bhp. The iron head became alloy, the inlet valve was made bigger, the inlet bore became 1 1/8” and so on.
In the 1960s just about anything Italian was considered cool, and Royal Enfield took many styling cues
