Rare Royal Enfield at Dania Beach show

Here's a motorcycle I never expected to see.

 I never thought I'd see one in person, but there was a Royal Enfield "Cycar" motorcycle on display at the 2026 Dania Beach (Florida) Vintage Motorcycle Show Jan. 31. 

Royal Enfield made only about 1,500 of Cycars between 1931 and 1936. That's rare! 

And this one is a beauty, immaculately restored to (I assume) better than new condition. In person, the Cycar looks tidy in size and well made. 

The Royal Enfield Cycar looks the business.

I feel badly that I recently wrote that the pressed steel enclosed body is "ugly."

I was comparing the Royal Enfield Cycar of 1931 to the postwar Velocette LE, which sold in thousands.

Compared to the genuinely boxy LE, the Cycar looks purposeful and utilitarian, yes, but certainly not ugly.

Mark Sawicki of Tallahassee wheeled his 1936 Cycar into the display area at Dania Beach as I watched. He told me that, by one count, only 14 Cycars still exist. His must be either the nicest, or at least the closest to it.

His Cycar (also called the Model Z) was displayed with full specifications and history. It won a "Judges' Award" at the show, indicating that all four judges agreed it was worthy of recognition.

Mark told me how he came to own it:

"I got my Cycar back in the mid '90s. I saw an ad in Old Bike Mart and a tiny picture of it. We had no internet so I called the number multiple times over a few days. It turned out the seller was the regalia officer for the Vintage Motorcycle Club and was a chauffeur who worked evenings and nights. This made it hard to contact him given the time difference and his schedule.

"He had to purchase the Cycar as part of a deal on a Model 9 Sunbeam that he wanted. The Cycar had been in a chicken coop since 1959 and the owner wanted to get rid of it, so he made buying it a requirement to purchase the Sunbeam.

"Anyway, I got it and restored it and have been riding and enjoying it ever since. There are not many of them, one is in the Sammy Miller Museum and I used to correspond with a guy in the Netherlands who had one that he would ride around at events dressed as a Vicar.

"Looking at the old logbook, my Cycar has had very few owners and was in pretty complete condition when I got it. The steering head tube portion of the one-piece frame had broken and had a plate welded to strengthen it; maybe a previous owner did some motocross jumps with it!"

Good for 35 miles per hour, a Cycar had a 148cc two-stroke motor, three-speed transmission with hand shift, and weighed only 168 pounds. It featured full lighting equipment, front-and-rear brakes, leg shields to keep the rider clean, and a step-through design to suit the ladies.

Its own mostly enclosed body was easy to clean.

Big motorcycle features on a little motorcycle.

The front suspension featured a real spring; not the silly rubber bands that would appear later, on the Royal Enfield Flying Flea.

It "was one of the many simple 'mounts for the millions' built during the 1930s,' the placard noted, adding that "this machine runs well and is ridden regularly."

Blogger Jorge Pullin has compiled period press reports from when the Cycar was new. They refer to the then new class of motorcycles as "Snowdens" and relate them to "the Snowden 15s tax" (half the existing yearly tax).

The explanation for this is found in the Budget Speech delivered by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden on April 27, 1931: 

"In order to encourage the manufacture in this country of a new type of light motor bicycle which is now being rapidly developed on the Continent, I propose to introduce a special rate of duty for motor bicycles, the engines of which have a cylinder capacity not exceeding 150 cubic centimeters."

Pressed steel full enclosure was all-new... in 1935.

At 148cc, the Model Z Cycar was Royal Enfield's attempt to meet resulting demand that didn't develop at the time. It was, after all, the Depression. The people who would buy a cheap and cheerful motorcycle if they could have didn't have any money at all to spare.

Post-war, Velocette (and, ultimately, Honda) would reap the rewards of real demand for motorcycles that weren't fundamentally dissimilar.

Haven't I seen your ugly face before?

It was a case of Beauty and the Beast.

 Royal Enfield once manufactured a motorcycle so ugly that even posing a pretty girl next to it wouldn't sell it. 

One advertisement showed the girl sitting on the Royal Enfield Model Z Cycar as a uniformed RAC officer gave her directions to her destination. 

The Model Z Cycar was a sales bust. But, funnily enough, a later look-alike motorcycle marketed by Velocette sold in numbers.

The Cycar and the Velocette LE look so much alike you couldn't pick one or the other out of a police line-up. So why was the Velocette such a success (production ran for more than 20 years)?

Well, for one, Velocette didn't try to peddle its ugly ducklings to pretty girls. It sold them to the police.

Same idea, from Velocette. But theirs was a success.

Paul D'Orleans of The Vintagent website, picked a Velocette LE as one of the "Top Ten" motorcycles scheduled for the Mecum Las Vegas Auction Jan. 27-31, 2026.

You've gotta know that he considered his choice — um — a bit controversial. My God: it's a boxy, underpowered, side-valve flat twin, and, what's worse it was the motorcycle that spoiled Velocette's reputation for building gorgeous motorcycles.

"Despite their popularity with the cops, this is the design that sank a great company," he wrote.

"They knew a people’s motorcycle would someday conquer the world, but that was the Honda C100, not a strange little water-cooled flat twin. "

The Velocette LE (for "Little Engine") up for auction is a 1970 model.

Not pretty, but it had its points.

Royal Enfield's own experiment with building a utilitarian people's motorcycle didn't even last until World War II. Only about 1,500 were built between 1931 and 1936.

Naturally, the Royal Enfield of 1931 wasn't even as sophisticated as the 1970 Velocette. The Royal Enfield had a 148cc two-stroke single cylinder motor, with three-speed hand shift.

But its frame was a clever single steel pressing, "offering complete protection from oil, grease and mud without sacrificing accessibility." Equipped with standard leg shields, it kept the icky stuff off a lady's skirt.

On the other hand, she was bound to get her hands oily using the gas cap to measure the correct amount of two-stroke oil to add to the mix.

Jorge Pullin has detailed information about the Cycar on his blog My Royal Enfields.

Interestingly, he has also tracked ad photos of the "lady in the fur coat" and her Cycar as Royal Enfield ran her around town posing with it!

Follow along as Jorge stalks the young woman from here.

To here.

To here.

And here.

Yes, they even made her wash it.