BSA M20 Gallery

February 21, 2017

The Birmingham Small Arms Business Limited (BSA) was a major British professional combine, a team of businesses manufacturing armed service and sporting firearms; bikes; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron libéralité; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered mining harvests; and hard chrome process.

In its peak, BSA (who also owned Triumph) was the major bike producer in the world. Back in the 1952s and early 1960s poor management and failure to develop new products in the motorcycle division added to a dramatic fall of sales to it is 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 Dureté Holdings, then owners of Norton-Villiers, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The initial company, The Birmingham Small Hands Company Limited, remains a subsidiary of Manganese Dureté but its name was changed in 1987.

Manganese Bronze continues to operate former BSA subsidiary Carbodies, now known as LTI Limited, manufacturers of Greater london Taxicabs and formerly the most significant wholly British-owned car manufacturer. (Manganese Bronze is now owned by the Chinese company Geely).