Exclusive: Pierre Terblanche quits Royal Enfield

Autocar Professional has learned that the celebrated motorcycle designer Pierre Terblanche has parted ways with Chennai-based Royal Enfield.

Terblanche, who is internationally known for his motorcycle designs, had joined Royal Enfield in November 2014 as director of design. He was located at company’s England-based office.

Appropriate reasons behind his departure from Royal Enfield, however, are not known. The company, on the other hand, remains tight-lipped and did not respond to a query regarding this development.

Terblanche, 60, was born in South Africa and did his Masters in Transport Design from the Royal College of Art in London. Although he briefly worked with Volkswagen’s advanced design studio in Dusseldorf in Germany earlier in his career, he soon moved on to design motorcycles – a subject closer to his heart.

Having worked with the iconic Italian motorcycle designer Massimo Tamburini (at Cagiva Research Centre), a highly revered name behind the designs of MV Agusta, Ducati and Cagiva, Terblanche went on to design some of the most popular models including Ducati Multistrada (first presented in 2001), HyperMotard (first unveiled at EICMA in 2005), X132 Hellcat Speedster (first shown in 2014) among others.

Prior to his 20-21 month stint at Royal Enfield, Terblanche is known to have worked for Ducati, Moto Guzzi, Norton Motorcycles, Cagiva, USA-based Confederate Motorcycles as major manufacturers.