BSA A65 Firebird Gallery
The Birmingham Small Arms Business Limited (BSA) was a major British professional combine, a grouping of businesses manufacturing armed service and sporting firearms; bikes; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron ordonnance; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered alloys; and hard chrome process.
In its peak, BSA (who also owned Triumph) was the major bike producer in the world. Back in the 1955s and early 1960s poor management and failure to develop new products in the motorcycle division led pre lit to a dramatic decrease of sales to the major USA market. The management had failed to appreciate the value of the resurgent Japanese motorcycle industry, leading to problems for the complete BSA group.
A government-organised rescue procedure in 1973 led to the takeover of remaining functions with what is now Manganese Fermeté Holdings, then owners of Norton-Villiers, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The first company, The Birmingham Small Forearms Company Limited, remains a subsidiary of Manganese Fermeté but its name was changed in 1987.
Manganese Bronze continues to operate former BSA subsidiary Carbodies, now known as LTI Limited, manufacturers of Birmingham Taxicabs and formerly the major wholly British-owned car manufacturer. (Manganese Bronze is now owned by the Chinese company Geely).
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