The Himalayan 440 is Rs 2.29 lakh. On RE’s listed prices that is Rs 6,000 over a Scram Trail and less than a Scram Force. Same engine, three bikes, one showroom.
Rs 2.29 lakh, ex-showroom. That is the Himalayan 440, launched on Friday, one variant, three colours, bookings open. Put it next to RE’s own price list for the Scram 440 and something odd happens: the Scram Trail is listed from Rs 2.24 lakh and the Scram Force at Rs 2,30,641 ex-showroom, which means the new Himalayan sits Rs 6,000-odd above one Scram and roughly Rs 1,600 below the other. Same 443cc engine. Same showroom. Three bikes inside the price of a decent helmet.
RE has not made your decision easier. It has made it a decision. Which was the point, yes?
Let’s understand what the money buys first
Strip the nostalgia off for a minute and the three are one air-cooled long-stroke single making 25.4PS and 34Nm, wearing three different pairs of shoes. The Scram Force gets alloys and tubeless tyres. The Scram Trail gets the same 19-inch front on tube-type spokes and saves you the money. The Himalayan 440 takes the same tube-type spokes and stretches everything: a 21-inch front wheel, 200mm of fork travel against 190, 220mm of ground clearance against 200, and a seat five millimetres taller at 800mm. No tubeless option. Not even as an extra.
Which is why the Rs 6,000 isn’t really a price gap, it’s a terrain gap. You are paying for a bigger front wheel and two centimetres of clearance and nothing else, no?
So what do you do
Here’s the thing. I haven’t owned either 440 and I won’t pretend otherwise. But I have spent many Sikkim weekends on a friend’s Himalayan 411, plus the Himalayan 450 launch ride and a Ladakh weekend on one in 2024, and the segment tells you the answer if you’re honest about where you actually ride.
If your riding is city traffic and the odd highway, buy the Scram Force. Tubeless is the thing you want at 9pm on the highway road with a nail in the rear, and the Force is the only one of the three that has it. If you want the cheapest way into this engine and you’ll stay on tar, the Trail. If the road turns to gravel more weekends than not, the 21-inch front and the extra clearance are worth far, far more than Rs 6,000, and that is the Himalayan 440. On the hilly road that combination is properly good.
And if you carry a pillion and luggage up the Sikkim side? Skip all three, mind you. The 450 is Rs 3.08 lakh on RE’s page, about Rs 79,000 more, and for that you get liquid cooling, some fifteen extra horses and tubeless spokes. The 411 was lovely as a single but it was a tractor two-up, and the 440 is, at heart, the same engine.
The bit RE will hear about
The riders has one complaint and it isn’t the price. It’s the wheels. Nobody who wanted this bike understands why the Scram got an alloy variant and the Himalayan got none, and a Scram owner in that thread says he’d swap tomorrow if the 440 had tubeless. That said, RE kept the 450 in the range instead of killing it, gave the OG the 6th gear the 411 never had, and priced the whole ladder so tightly that the choice is finally about the road, not the wallet. Fair play. Autocar says it’s unclear whether the 450’s tubeless spokes fit. My guess is somebody in chennai will find out before Mumbai tells us.
Three bikes, one helmet’s worth of money between them. Pick by the road, not the badge. The badge is the same anyway.
