Birmingham Small
Arms (BSA) Resurrected!
The photo below is of the
new 2023 BSA Goldstar 650cc 'single cylinder' motorcycle. First
manufactured in the 1950s, this new variant heralds the
resurgence of the BSA famous brand.
Birmingham Small Arms (BSA)
manufactured armaments' and motorcycles for the British Army
during World War II. BSA began in June
1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham, England. It was formed by a
group of fourteen gunsmith members of the Birmingham Small Arms
Trade Association specifically to manufacture guns by machinery.
They were encouraged to do this by the War Office which gave the
BSA gunsmiths free access to technical drawings and to the War
Office's Board of Ordnance's Royal Small Arms Factory factory at
Enfield.
The Birmingham Small
Arms Company Limited (BSA) was a major British industrial
combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and
sporting firearms; bicycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and
bodies; steel; iron castings; hand, power, and machine tools;
coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered metals; and hard
chrome process. After the Second
World War, BSA did not manage its business well, and a
government-organised rescue operation in 1973 led to a takeover
of such operations as it still owned.
Those few that survived
this process disappeared into the ownership of other businesses. In October 2016,
India's Mahindra Group purchased BSA for £3.4 million in an
effort to reintroduce motorcycles bearing the famous BSA name.
When NVT Motorcycles Limited was liquidated in 1978, its
management, then under William Colquhoun, formed a new company (BSA
Company) and bought from NVT the rights to the BSA motorcycle
brand.
Ashish Joshi,
director of BSA said, "we've got Birmingham in the name,
Birmingham Small Arms is what BSA is. We can't be anywhere else
other than the West Midlands and the contribution that
Birmingham has made to British society and the automotive world
is unapparelled."