With a 648 cc air-cooled engine and standard twin-shock frame geometry, the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 can easily be many things. The modern-classic layout lends itself to scrambler and café-style builds, and Mumbai-based Mean Green Customs has been blowing our minds for the last year with how easily RE’s 650 platforms can be transformed into something that stops you in your tracks. A bobber is another story, though.
Bobbers are stripped down, low-slung and usually require a sloping line from the stem to the rear axle, which the Interceptor 650 lacks in OE form. Whether through imagination or a trained eye, Mean Green’s head honcho, Aditya Deshmukh, was more than willing to field the request from a client looking for “a custom bobber that’s unmistakably custom, yet subtle enough to age gracefully.” So, how did he do it?
The Interceptor utilizes a double-cradle frame developed by the chassis wizards at Harris Performance. It’s stable for canyon carving, but its perfectly flat top fights the plunging geometry required for a traditional bobber. You can’t just bolt shorter shocks to the rear without destroying the handling dynamics—and creating lines that are hard on the eyes. Instead, Mean Green brought out the cutting wheels and severed the factory subframe. With the bulky pillion support discarded, the team fabricated an entirely new rear section designed to sit significantly lower to the tarmac.
Aditya also hinted at the bike’s stretched stance, which clearly involved some trickery with the rear swingarm. It’s been lengthened subtly. Not enough to create dead space in front of the rear wheel, but it’s enough to lay the rear shocks out at a more dramatic angle that contributes to that sloping line we referenced.
